I need to replace my upper and lower ball joints and am having a difficult time deciding on what to buy. I’ve heard MOOG is far from what it used to be, and Mevotech isn’t much better minus promising reviews from their TTX line. I like doing the work myself, and recently asked my go-to shop in the area what they use. They reported that they are backed by AutoZone and use Duralast- if a ball joint fails, AutoZone warranties it and pays the labor. Is it worth me trying to save a few bucks and rolling the dice on iffy ball joints and doing it myself, or opening the wallet for better piece of mind? If y’all have positive recommendations for ball joints I’d greatly appreciate it!

 

I put Duralast in a '99 and they had slop within a year.

Don't use MOOG. I'm not sure on Mevotech's various tiers.

Do get the angled cup adapters for your BJ press

 

Looking at RA's offerings, I'd probably go Dana with TRW as second.

I honestly know nothing of Lemforder but they look promising and are quite a bit more expensive

 

I've typically had good luck with TRW parts over the years. When I changed ball joints in my truck several years ago, I mail ordered McQuay-Norris joints from Laura @ https://www.springsnthings.com/

 

I did mine a few years ago, did a bunch of research and found a number of complaints on aftermarket ball joints with knurled ridges added for a tighter fit. They were saying it was causing the bores in the steering knuckles to lose metal making them more and more sloppy so I opted for the OEM Dana's which are smooth. Dana is an excellent brand and I would argue will probably last longer than anything else.

 

I wonder if the factory used all Dana parts or something else? When I got my truck(60K) the u joints were gone and the ball joints had a small amount of slop. I'm sure they were the cheaper versions of what they have available(no grease fittings). Ball joints got replaced with moog(some ones in it now) but from what others are saying they were made differently back then. I used to love TRW engine parts. Back in the 80's I got all new bearings for a motor I was building. There was a mix up and I got TRW mains and Clevite rods. The Clevites were just put together with shrink plastic on them all. Well they went back to the parts store and I got my TRW's. The TRW's were all separated from one another and individually wrapped. You could see they were better quality compared to the Clevites. The tabs that keep the bearing from spinning were much better made. I looked tor TRW bearings before and none were found. TRW was bought in 2015 so that's probably why you don't see engine parts anymore. Another manufacturer gone or changed.

 

https://www.detroitaxle.com/

 

TRW is still affiliated with Sachs and ZF. That said, I recently had some Sachs struts on a Subaru fail in less than a year. I hope that was a blip because I've installed a LOT of Sachs struts.

Clevite was scooped up by Apollo Private Equity along with other now-terrible brands like Tenneco, Moog, FelPro, Walker, Thrush, National oil seals and Federal Mogul. The latter owns Beck Arnley which also now sucks.

I can tell you TRW OEM'd stuff like the steering rack for a WK2 Grand Cherokee.

I've never personally seen play in the knuckle bore. It's always in the ball stud.

Detroit Axle tends to be bottom end Amazon special.

Also note Moog has a "TSB" out claiming play in their new ball joints is normal on certain Jeep and Dodge applications:
https://www.moogparts.com/technical/...jeep.html.html

The skeptic in me thinks it's like the guy who trips and pops back up and declares, "I meant to do that!!"

I also wonder how many alignment shops know this because the old rule of thumb is ANY play is TOO MUCH play to align anything

 

Actually made in china parts hiding behind the "Detroit" name. Reminds me of some jap car commercial "All American Subaru". Two words that don't go together! Wonder if they do that in China? All Chinese Ford!

 

What's funny is, some of the "Japanese" cars have more american content in them that the so-called 'american' brands....