The fatal flaw with greasable joints is that people actually have to grease them , if they fail to do so obviously it's going to wear out prematurely. I've replaced just about every BJ on every car i've owned at one point or another and always used moog replacements with zirk fittings, I have yet to have one of the moogs go bad on me.

And yes DEFINITLY do them all at the same time. If they said the other two were even a little iffy that just means you'll be pulling your truck into the garage in another couple months and replacing those as well, it's just so much easier to do it all at once and have that nice peace of mind that it was done right the first time!

It's really not a difficult job, even a novice wrencher could cuss their way through it eventually, but like already mentioned just be careful what you unbolt because some of the peices are under considerable load and a spring to the face will end your day real quick...

 

Looks like Ill be doing the uppers and the lowers at the same time using moog of course.
Im going to remove the control arm since I need to replace the rubber piece at the top of the spring anyways.

How often are you suppose to grease them?

 

Depends who you ask. Personally when I'm doing an oil change i'll just grab the grease gun and make sure they are all good to go. This is with gassers and I have more than enough time to grease every joint on my front end, with a diesel you'll probably still have to sit there and watch the truck drain for a bit

 

I change my own oil, but I stopped in at JiffyLube one day and asked how much to grease my tie rods...... They did it for free.

 

Most quick lube places will grease all your joints while they change the oil free of charge, and I know valvoline will refill all fluids and regrease all joints in between changes as well, not sure about the rest though.

That's if you trust a quick lube place to put more than 6 qts of oil in your truck .

 

who makes a good grease gun? Im looking at the prices and they seem to be all over the place ranging from $20 - 300. Some are cordless and I dont care anything about that.

 

Cordless? Just get a manual pump grease gun and call it a day. You're only greasing ball joints, not 30 different zerk fittings on 50 different vehicles. Not worth the extra cost by any means.

 

Agreed. I used to have an air-powered grease gun that could shoot a blob of grease 20 feet and SPLAT on the wall. It also over-greased everything. I had grease coming out the seams. With a hand-pump gun you have much more control of how much you are putting in.

 

x3, I've never used anything but hand pump grease guns and have had no issues. At the moment i'm rocking a harborfreight special:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=95575

works great, seals fine, hasn't let me down in quite a few years.

 

Well I just did the passengers side, and I have to say, it really wasnt as bad as I was expecting. I did the uppers and the lowers. Ill probably do a write up with pics on the drivers side and maybe it will help someone out in the future.


Are the moog ball joints pre-greased? I dont have a grease gun just yet.

 

No, none that i've ever purchased were pre-greased.

 

Well I'm finally getting around to doing my balljoints and I just thought I'd weigh in with my current experience ...

the lugnuts came off with my impact gun (~700ft/lbs in reverse), but it ended with those ... caliper bolts required a 3" extension on a breaker bar, and about 200lbs of jhew dangling at the other end... axle nuts broke not only mine, but my friends 1/2" breaker bar (sheered right off), AND sheered off another friends 3/4" breaker bar... They finally broke loose using a 3/4" drive ratchet with a 2ft. handle, oh and 6ft. of pipe after that and another jhew dangling from the end... bearing hub bolts were not that bad since I had the other 4' of pipe added to my ratchet... pressed the hub out using the power steering method, worked like a charm, stank up my garage running it like that though (argh winter!!!!)...

All in all I've got the passenger side completely torn down and the drivers side basically just needs the hub pressed out, if I had set aside an entire day to do this it could have been done considering the extra stuff I had to go buy, but with the tools on hand now I'd say a few hours is a reasonable estimate... not to bad, but still a pain in the butt haha... had my oxy/acetalyne tanks been full it might have made the axle nuts a little easier but oh well, mapp gas was taking way to long and a trip to home depot for a massive pipe sounded like fun .