dodgethis91cmns

so today was carlisle all truck nationals and i met up with a few friends in the morning. when i was pulling up my buddys road him and his dad were standing outside and they told me my tire was realllllllly tucking in the wheel well and it was BAD.

when we got back from the show my friend and i put it on a jack took the tire off and there it was.............a sight i could have done without.

the upper ball joint had completely blown the threads out of the control arm backed the nut to the cotter pin and messed the contol arm up a little.

so now im super mad because i just did the ball joints a month ago and had a bear of a time with them but did a good job IMO. i just dont know what to do with the ol girl. i just put a booster and master in got that all foxed up. dod the ball joints and have a stout built trans in it with less then 8k on it.

my uncles got a 96 5spd 2wd that needs a little elbow grease but its a nice truck with 150k.

what do you guys think?

dodgethis91cmns

for your viewing pleasure

ADMOPARMAN

So you messed the ball joint up when you did it. It fell apart and now your blaming the truck.?.? I'm confussed.

dzl_damon

Balljoints on your truck are a lot bigger than the ones on a 2nd gen for what it's worth. Did you threadlock the balljoint when you put it in?

Sucks to hear, but you may need a new upper control arm. Did you get Moog balljoints? if so, you have a free ball joint to put in. If you just put all that money into it, I wouldn't get something new, as frustrating as it all may be. You're just trading your set of KNOWN problems for a set of UNKNOWN problems by getting another truck that "needs elbow grease". My $0.02

dodgethis91cmns

it deffinatly doesnt have anything to do with the way i put the ball joint in. and no its not a moog its a duralast ball joint ill be picking up my free one tomorrow. i stand behinf my work as a mechanic on my own vehicle and some others. if i did make a mistake i would abosolutely be the first to admit it. and i did not threadlock the ball joint but i wouldnt have called those small groves thread.

GIT-R-DONE

Ah, your just having a bad day. Chalk it up and have a better day tomorrow.

I wouldnt change trucks, as you already know what you have in yours. JMO...

d22019

I know this isn't the right way to fix the problem but this is what I did. On my 91 i took the arm off the truck and welded the ball joint to it,I know I know thats not the way to do things but I was a broke unemployed high school kid and it was still going strong when I sold the truck a year later. I'm not suggesting to do that but it got me by with no problems.

dodgethis91cmns

d22019- thats is exactly my fix. my bottom ones were welded in before i replaced them. so when i replaced them i had them welded on the bottom collar under the control arm. its going to be the same for the top. i have a local boneyard that had a d250 in it with a ctd. hopefully i can snag a control arm.

will a d250 control arm work on my 350? and could a gasser work

thrashingcows

Control arms from a Gasser or a diesel will work. They are all the same, the only difference is in the stud size on the upper balljoint. You can get NEW upper control arms off e-bay for about $45.

But I agree with the others, sometimes regardless of what you do, or how it was done, mechanical failure happens. Chalk it up to lesson learned, and gonna try again.

dzl_damon

My rule of thumb is if I'm not smearing it with anti-seeze, then I'm applying threadlock

SOOT4BRAINS

Most times what happens is the old ball joints are so stuck and jammed in there it spreads the threads a little bit when you take them out and the new ones don't grip the threads as well. Even if they seem to thread in tight. The only thing to do is make sure you have it as clean as possible before you take the old ones out. I soaked the control arms in a bucket of carb cleaner over night to help loosen things up. My new ones threaded in nice and tight and I used the TIG to tack it in place instead of threadlocker. Thats just more crap to mess up the threads if you ever have to take it out again. But this stuff is old and stuff happens...... sounds like you did a good job and the parts failed. Fix it up and keep the old gal on the road.

wannadiesel

^ What he said.

markvieth2

mines just did that last week.. the ball joint pulled threw and wiped out the control arm. i went to the pick apart and they had plenty of control arms in the 250s and 150s no 350s in site .. and all the gas vers.. but all looked the same so i yanked one out.. had the wrong ball joint for my 350 so i went to napa got the correct ball joint and then went to pep boys and they R&R it with the correct one for me.. non issues.. also i came up with welding the lil POS in place.. i didn't go with that method but its ready for a back up... ill post pics of the weld up one later..

Onemoparnut

That sucks when you do something to the truck and you feel like you finally accomplished something good and then it breaks. I know how that goes all to well. I would just weld it in and get a new arm the next time you need a balljoint replaced.