Ball Joints, Brakes, U-Joints

[Bouma]

I took my truck to my buddy who owns his own auto shop today. I took it in for rear u-joints. I could hear they were going out so I thought I should get it done. I asked him to go over the truck since he had it. The brakes are almost metal to metal, the u-joints like I thought are dry and rusted, and the upper and lower ball joints are bad. This is crazy, I understand the brakes and u-joints but all the ball joints. We had the truck in the air and moved the wheel with a breaker bar. There is a fair amount of play in them. The question is, what is everyone running for ball joints. I saw carli makes a very nice joint but damn they want 800-900 for a set of uppers and lowers. Is it worth the money. Thoughts?

 

[jelag]

We look for problems with suspension when we see abnormal tire wear... to date with the trucks we own, we've not had a problem... we still see close to 100K miles on steer tires and the re-caps we run on the back... we don't rotate tires, but run a rib tire on the front and a bandag all season recap on the rear... none of our trucks have had any front end repair and there are 2 other trucks besides what are listed below... BTW we run 225/70/19. 5 on all of them... now could the ball joints be out of tolerance, oh I'm sure they are... . but until we see tire wear issues we leave them alone... .

With the exhaust brakes we see over 150K miles between brake jobs, but like you mention we end up doing u-Joints every 60-80K miles... when we have the brakes open for inspection we pull the ABS sensor and grease the front wheel bearings...

We keep our trucks for 500K miles... and are looking for lowest cost per mile...

 

[HBarlow]

We look for problems with suspension when we see abnormal tire wear... to date with the trucks we own, we've not had a problem... we still see close to 100K miles on steer tires and the re-caps we run on the back... we don't rotate tires, but run a rib tire on the front and a bandag all season recap on the rear... none of our trucks have had any front end repair and there are 2 other trucks besides what are listed below... BTW we run 225/70/19. 5 on all of them... now could the ball joints be out of tolerance, oh I'm sure they are... . but until we see tire wear issues we leave them alone... .

With the exhaust brakes we see over 150K miles between brake jobs, but like you mention we end up doing u-Joints every 60-80K miles... when we have the brakes open for inspection we pull the ABS sensor and grease the front wheel bearings...

We keep our trucks for 500K miles... and are looking for lowest cost per mile...

My experiences have been similar although I don't run them to 500k miles.