New to this! Front tire wearing badly. Dealer service wants $1100.00 to change lower ball joints and install camber kit in 2000 F150 4x4 (97,000 miles). Is this in the ball park? Is it a shade tree job? Any special tools needed? Thanks for your help.
3underpar

 

My local Firestone repair joint quoted me U$300 plus parts (U$80) for lower ball joint replacement. It's not something that I'd want to tackle in my driveway. The shimkit install takes an hour with a jack and some big metric wrenches. You'll need an alignment afterward. While you install the shimkit, replace the upper ball joints (U$50 each) at the same time. Only takes another 30 minutes at most and the tools are rentable at Autozone etc.

Fritz

 

A local place here quoted me $705 to replace both lower ball joints, the idler arm, install the camber bolt kit, and align it afterwards. I told them thanks but no thanks, and bought the parts myself, rented the ball joint press (I had a pickle fork), and did it myself. Took me about 3 hours or so (okay, so I'm not very fast). The parts they said would cost me $340 I found for $132, the rental of the tool was free (O'Reilly's), and the alignment (from a different shop) was $60. I found the ball joints and idler arm on ebay for $76 shipped -and it was the same stuff the shop was going to put in. The camber bolt kit I bought from the local dealer for $56 (you know you're getting screwed when the dealer charges less for the camber kit than an independant shop). Anyway, all told I spent less than $200. Search around, there's a lot of info out there to help you through it. The metric wrenches for the bolt kit are either 21mm or 22mm - can't remember for sure. Good luck!

 

Thats way too much for just lower ball joints. Last year I had mine done along with some other things (at the local dealership).

Change spark plugs
change tranny fluid
change diff. fluid
change both lower ball joints

total for the bill was a little over $1000