Ball Joints - How Loose is too Loose
 

Just went in for an alignment, and the shop showed me my ball joints were loose. They had the truck weight off the wheels and he used a pry bar to show up and down movement on the ball joints. The right side was at most 1/8" up and down movement and the left much less. He said it needed new joints before alignment. Since I am under extended warranty, could this hold off for a few thousand miles?

The wear limit on the lower ball joint is .090" vertically.

The wear limit on the upper ball joint is .060" laterally.

It's easy to measure with a crowbar & vernier calipers.

The upper ball joint is essentially a floating king pin in design, with a lot of vertical play to allow movement during turns, since the axes of the upper & lower ball joints are not parallel.

The lower ball joint is sized similiarly to those of older 1/2 ton Chevys and Jeeps (which use the upper ball joint to share the load), yet carries the substantially higher entire weight of the front end alone.

I doubt you need new ball joints for an alignment - we align most of the time with worn ball joints... the OEM units are simply under-engineered for load capacity.
It's a wonder they hold up as well as they do.

I recommend a quality aftermarket ball joint when yours need replacing.

Thanks for the info. Think I will leave it alone for a while, since, after researching the archives, found suggestions to needle grease the rubber boots. Just finished that.

ball joints
 

i just changed mine after 100k, i needed them @ 60k but did the extra 40. Your tires will wear funny and when they are really bad the steering gets funky too. If you think your going to do it yourself be prepaired to do the ujoints too, they are a royal pain if you dont have all the tools and patients to do them

I have 188k on the truck and the ball joinst have a little play in them. I'm looking for some good amarket BJ's also. Who has them and what do they cost??? TIA

Jim