What kind of time am I looking at to replace my upper and lower ball joints? Was told by one garage 7 hours. Is that right? Thanks!!

 

I did it myself in about 5 hrs. 7 if I drank.

 

mine prob took somewhere near 5 hrs. alot easier since i already fought the unit bearings off both sides previously and antisiezed everything.... the correct tools really help make the process quick

 

,,, man that'd be a hard choice,,,,,,,
good post

 

I just replaced the front steering setup with the 08 upgrade, did ball joints, and the Solid Axle free spin kit, & new u-joints.

If you have not had the stock hubs off then plan on that eating up some time. We tried everything to get the stock hubs off my truck and ended up having to cut the ball joints to get the hub off the truck, then had to take it over to my buddies shop and put a 50 ton press on it and heat the crap out of it before it would come out. Also had to take the torch to the ball joints and heat them up as well to get them out.

All told I had a good solid day into the whole project from start to finish.

 

Matt, how do you like it??? Can you tell huge differences with the new steering set up? What brand of ball joints did you go with?

Thanks...I think mine is coming due for the same work.

..

 

Texas,
I've been collecting parts for a while so it wasnt too expensive an outlay all at once. But overall I'm extremely pleased with the upgrades.

We put on the 08 steering upgrade, Dynatrac Ball Joints, the Solid Axle Free spin kit, and I used oem u-joints. The truck had 176k on the original stock parts and the ball joints and u joints were completely shot. Once we had everything on the truck we found out I had a drive line vibration that we traced to a bad carrier bearing along with at least one bad u-joint in the drive shaft. So I just got in a one piece driveshaft from Doghouse about a week ago and put that on as well.

I've made alot of changes to the truck over the past couple of weeks so its hard to say what really improved, but the difference in the steering is a huge improvement, there is zero drive line vibration or chatter when pulling loads...Infact right after I put the drive shaft on I took it out for a spin. I didnt even realize I was doing 80 in a 65 the truck was running that smooth. I also plan on replacing the Bilstein shocks on the truck with another set of Bilsteins. Current set has approx. 100k on them and I think they are starting to go.

The best part of the upgrade was defiantly the free spin kit and the new dynatrac ball joints...well worth the money and time it took to put them in. The steering is much tighter and effortless to turn the truck. Also having 2wd low for backing trailers up hills is priceless! But overall a whole lot less vibration and feedback in the steering...should have been this way from the factory.

 

Just did it today, and it took 5 hours to do all 4 balljoints and both u-joints. No drinking...well maybe a little, just a 6 pack between myself and my brother in law. Went failrly smoothly!!

 

I would love to do these, are they all available for my 02?

 

Yes, several brands


I took about 1.5 hours to do my drivers side, everything was super rust, but some how my bearing came right off. I have to do the other side at some point, but the driverside was needed as I had a bad ujoint also.

 

iT'S ALWAYS MORE FUN WHEN YOU DON'T DRINK ALONE. Glad it went smooth for you!

 

Im collecting parts now for a full day front end redo. I've got one hub going out.....so im replacing that. New front axle ujoints, Dynatrac Ball joints, 08.5 steering upgrade kit, KORE leveling kit including coils and bilstein shocks. Also im buying new tires (prob Firestone Destination MTs in 315s) to go on black powdercoated H2s. Hopefully in a week or so me and a friend can knock it all out.....then i'll take it to get aligned. Gonna cost some $$$ but it should drive like a new truck when im done. 140K on the truck. Wish us luck.

..

 

Biggest thing that ate time on my project was getting the hubs out and ball joints out. Both required some serious beating to get out. But once everything was out it all went back together very quickly.

I've taken several long trips now with the truck pulling the horse trailer...like it more and more each day.

 

Bought a special press kit from NAPA to press out the ball joints. Also works for ujoints.

Did my ball joints by myself in about 5 hours with air tools. To9 get the bearings off I backed the bolts out half way then placed a deep socket over the head of the bolt so it would jam up against the diff tube when the wheel as turned. Then I fired the engine up and used the power steering to push the bolt.

Since I wasn't messing with the u-joints I left the axle nut alone and slid the whole assembly(bearing, dually adapter, axleshaft) out as one piece. Saved having to unbolt the dually extension.

 

1" impact gun makes short work of the axle nut...yeah it was overkill but why work to hard.