Hey guys,

I know Ryan (Eaglescanfly) was having a problem with hearing a rattle in his drivers side wheel well, and I think I have found the cause.

My front end has always made noise, and I know the sway bar bushings are bad so I thought it was that. I took the sway bar off last week though, and the noise didnt go away. The noise is a metal on metal clank, and it happens when going over uneven terrain, turns, ect. which led me to believe it was the sway bar. I pulled the wheels off several times, trying to figure out what it could be. Lower ball joints were replaced, tie rods were tight, upper control arms seems good, and CVs didnt have any damage.

I found the problem when I got under the truck with both wheels on the ground. I shook the tie rods, and then grabbed the upper control arm on my passanger side and I got it to move up and down. If you have this rattle problem on either or both sides of your front end, reach around the tire or grab the control arm from underneath and see if you have play in it. You cant do it with the truck jacked up, and thats why I couldnt find it all the times I checked. Heres a video showing my old control arms, and the play I am talking about: (I removed a part of the boot to see the ball joint, it wasnt torn previously. These are factory ball joints/control arms with 117k miles on them)



The rattle didnt get bad (it was always present) until riding with my leveling kit for a while. So Im guessing because of the changed angle, the ball joint was able to move in and out of its socket more. I suggest you try shaking your upper control arms with the truck on level ground, and if they dont move, take a jack and raise the truck a half inch at the time, and shake the control arms again. As you can see in the video, the ball joint on my passanger side was only wore out in the normal riding height position.
Hope this helps, cheers!

 

Thanks for the info man, that will help a lot of people. I have been noticing a clunk in mine aswell. I will have to check it out.

Oh. You can find more play too if you take the load off the wheels by jacking up the truck by the outer edge of the lower arm. Dunno if there's a safe spot to do it on the daks, but I found a bad balljoint on my S10 that way.

 

I took my truck in for an alignment check today and asked them to check out everything while they had her. Happy to report, the alignment was spot on and the report on the front end is positive. They found nothing wrong with the ball joints, sway bar end links or tie rods. Happy to hear that.

 

My front end should be solid now. I have the new control arms in and everything it torqued up, just waiting for my dad to get home so I can tap the holes to put the grease nipples in. I dont know how to tap threads so I figured I would wait. It was pretty crappy of Moog not to put the nipples on, and then the holes provided for the nipples dont even have thread in them.

I greased up the lower ball joints today, and on the one side grease started coming out around the boot after a few squirts ..... I hope that nothing has gotten in there.

 

so they are greasable but you have to tap the threads for the grease fitting? thats kinda dumb..lol

 

Well we went to tap them, and we were hitting metal. My dad thought there was a plate to drill through, but it was the ball joint. When I walked away for a second, he just man handled it and got them in there. Its all good now. Moog shouldve just had them on from the start, since there are no memos provided in the box.

 

Wow a lot of information there. Thanks Bobby! I can't believe Moog didn't send them out with the nipples already installed. Glad to hear you finally got them in!!

 

okay, so do they definitly need to be tapped or do they come with a shtty tap that needs the grease fitting manhandled into?

 

They arent tapped, the nipples are self tapping. There is already a hole in the top of the ball joint housing though.