HELP! what is causing my ball joint to keep failing???

[kewljay223]

hey. i bought my 95 c1500 lowered from the original owner. seems to have been done correctly but im not 100% sure. its a 4-6 drop. always had a pulling problem. finally went in to get it aligned to a shop i trust (been going for years) told me all front end needs to be replaced first. bushings, bjs, tie rod, etc. so i did it. then they tell me the frame needed to be pulled cuz the caster or camber was maxed out. idk how tho cuz the truck didnt show any signs of serious accident. but whatever. anyway, had that fixed and is now aligned. less then a week after front suspension fix, ball joint started clunking BAD. loud as hell! brought it in and they said sometimes there are factory defect parts. swapped it out no prob. 6-8 months later, it fails again! same noise!! same bj!!! upper passenger side. take it in, hes concerened but swaps it out. a week later, guess what happened..... WTF!!! he doesnt want to do it now without knowing the cause and hes losing money due to warranty. but what could cause this!? the truck has been lowered its whole life without this issue. pretty sure the first bj was the factory. he said the factorys had a plastic inside which could have caused me to not hear it before, but now they all are metal. he is using moog which is supposed to be pretty good and supposedly fixes a lot of peoples problems. well its just the opposite for me! lol i dont mind using another brand but dont wanna put something else in if its just gonna fail also. does anyone else have/had or even heard about this problem? i sure havnt. googled, went thru this forum, checked local performance shops. im at a loss here. idk what to do. are there any "performance" ball joints to fix this? or a special one for dropped trucks? i know this isnt something im just gonna have to live with since most dropped trucks out there are the 88-98 c/k's and i sure ass hell dont hear their ball joints popping a mile away.

sorry for the long post and rant. im just very frustrated at this point and dont know what else to do. spent a ton of money and time into "fixing" the front and now i have another problem!! any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[towman]

moog is good stuff, not an expert on lowered trucks by any means but got to wonder if the control arm is bad

 

[kewljay223]

the lower was cracked so it was replaced when they did everything else. they would have mentioned the upper if they noticed anything. hmmmm.... how would i tell if it is bad or not? and just out of curiosity, how would that cause the bj to fail? some sort of stress? if so i would assume the arm would have to be like waaay warped or something to put it in a bind enuf to cause it to fail. which to me would be noticable. but im no mechanic so idk for sure. thanks for the quick response. want to go on a trip next weekend so would like to get this fixed next week if possible.

 

[stroker52]

is the springs cut to get the 4" drop or is this done with drop springs 2" with 2" drop spindles?? if the springs are cut then the ball joint is in a bind... you put the upper control arm at a big angle... we go though this with are dirt cars, there is some ball joints out there that can fix it if this is you problem but if the springs are cut then i would pull them out trash them and do the drop right...!

or do what we use to do with the stock stuff... find a ball joint that is held together with rivets grind them apart.. pull all the stuff out of the ball joint and where the stud goes in the bottom the long slot, grind the slot longer to give it more movement...

 

[kewljay223]

thanks stroker. sounds like a move in the right direction. like i said, the previous owner dropped it so idk what all was done. but i am pretty sure they are drop spindles because the lower arm is like 2-3 inches off the ground. if it was just the springs then i would assume the arm would be a bit higher.... is there a way to tell for sure? id number on the spindle? count the coils? how many coils to stock have and how many do drop coils have? this is all i can think of to verify. is there another way?

so lets say they are drop spindles and drop springs like it should have.... this would mean everything should work correctly right? if so, then i am back at square one right?

 

[sewlow]

If the frame had to be pulled, how are the A-frames? Something that caused a bent frame, could also have tweeked those, too.

 

[kewljay223]

a-frame???

 

[sewlow]

a-frame???

The two 'A' shaped arms on the top & bottom of the springs. The part that the ball joints are bolted to. Which are attached to the spindles. The shocks, & sway bar are also connected to the A-frames.

 

[kewljay223]

oh sorry. i always thought those were called a-arms. never heard the term a-frame. thought you might be talking about something different. anyway, im not 100% if they are in perfect conditionor not. like i mentioned, my mechanic only said anything about the one that was cracked but didnt say anything about the others. im sure he would have mentioned it if he had noticed anything. and by they way, the frame was pulled on the driver side. and my bj problem is on the passenger side.... i wouldnt think that would affect it...????

 

[sewlow]

Weird!