Replacing upper ball joints on my 96 dakota 4x4. I unscrewed them when i screwed in the new ones they only tighten so much and loosen up again (jump thread) how tight do they need to be. Do i need to replace control arm

 

For 2wd it is

1. Tighten the ball joint itself to 125 ft. lbs. (169 Nm).

I can not find a torque spec for 4wd. The ball joints are similar. So I expect it to be the same. It needs to be tight! Think of to tighten your tires lug nuts on the tires. Those are suposto be something like 90-100ft lbs. So it needs to be tighter. Yes you should replace the control arm. One guy on here had the same problem. He welded his on for temporary reasons. I don't recommend this for everyday driving!

 

lol, that wasn't a temporary solution, my truck has dropped 2 ball joints in the past year, I'm welding them in from now on.

But yes, replace the control arm if your not willing to weld them in, cause if the threads are messed up it will break through, I can guarantee you of that.

 

I mic ed the old ball joints and new ones and found out the new ones were smaller (duralast) so i went to napa checked theirs they matched was able to torque them to 130 ft pounds thanks for the advice

 

You'll be happy you went with NAPA.

On a similar note - I used my 2-1/8" ball joint socket today and took both uppers out. Came out very easy (with a breaker bar and 2-3 foot cheater pipe), which is quite uncommon for me.
Of course, maybe for me the stuff I think should be hard is simple, but the things that should be easy is hard -- like the lower bolts for the shock that broke off flush Still haven't really gotten around to fixing that biatch.