I recently had my lower ball joints replaced, and while the truck was on the lift, I noticed something about the upper control arms. Mine said TRW on the bottom side of them, which I found kind of odd. I've owned this truck since 26k miles and find it hard to believe that it would've had them replaced before then, unless there was a recall.

So what I need, is someone who has had their truck since new, and has their original control arms to take a look and see if they also say TRW on them. I know there were a large amount of ball joint recalls for Dodge/Jeep/Chrysler at one time, but I didn't think the 3rd gen Dakotas were part of that. Just curious as to what came on these trucks to begin with.

 

Trw is an oem supplier for many company's. The easiest way to tell if your control arms are original is to look at the back side of the ball joint. If has a grease zerk its aftermarket, if its sealed it oem.

 

Those are my factory ones off my 05 ..... swapped them out at about 115k I believe

 

Thanks, in the vid you can see the TRW stamp right next to the ball joint, just like mine, so that confirms for me that they're the originals. I almost decided to replace them when I did the lowers, but left them alone, as they aren't bad...yet. It's only a matter of time, as I've had a rash of suspenion/steering problems with this truck lately, at only 50k miles, and I don't expect these to last to 115k like yours did. Moogs will replace them just like the lowers. It looks like I'm starting to have problems with my intermediate shaft already as well.

 

My front end has gone down the drain since 100k. I replaced the original lower ball joints around 90k, and from there it was just constant clunks and creaks, and its still creaks sometimes. I swapped the struts, and put in a leveling kit, and now I have this irritating click in my wheel. I thought it was my steering shaft so I swapped it, but it came back. It did fix it for a while, so Im not sure if it is still the shaft or something else. Im still running stock tie rods, so those are next on the list even though they dont have any play.