Went to do emissions/inspection in my '95 2500 2wd cummins on Monday and the guy said I need a ball joint first. All he did was jack up the front end and grabbed the tire and moved the tire, I don't have a lot of experience with front end parts at all. But just from reading online to check the ball joints was a lot more work, wouldn't just simply grabbing the tire and moving it be the hub?

 

Grabbing at 3&9 will show tie rods. 6&12 will show ball joints. In all directions it could be a combination or hub.

Usually hubs will start growling when they go bad.

 

when you grab the tire and detect movement, then you look inside the tire at what's moving. if you know what you're looking for - upper and lower ball joint, tie rod end, etc, is pretty easy to spot. if those areas are tight, then its the hub/bearing which is sort of invisible, but you can feel the movement. a pro can identify this in about 10 seconds.

 

I checked and it's defiantly my lower ball joint. Now, onto my next question is this something I should try and tackle or what? How hard is it?

 

Rent the ball joint press from the local parts store, do it yourself. Not that bad of a job.

 

Well from some other reading online I was seeing some are welded in, or rivited it, and one other way.
I looked on advance autos website and I they had 16 results but only two were for 2wd trucks on was $85 and the other was $20 and said non-welded.

 

2wd? Probably rivited. Have to grind the heads of the rivit off and punch them out. Remove ball joint and install new one. Use supplied bolts in place of the rivits.

 

Yup, rivets

It's not a terrible job if you have access to air tools. The removing of the rivets is the hardest part of the whole damn thing.

 

http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/web...wer#fragment-1

http://shop.advanceautoparts.com/web...+joint+-+lower

 

Those are press in. Are they pressed in or riveted on your Ram? Simple look at the control arm would tell. Advance only shows press in style..

AutoZone shows pressed in too.