Last night a rather troubling incident occurred with my '04 2500 truck....A deer jumped out in front of the vehicle traveling in front of me on a back country road. The car in front of me slammed on the brakes, so I did the same to avoid an accident. ( I am quite certain that I was traveling approx 40-45 mph.) However, immediately after I slammed on the brakes, both lower control arms onmy truck buckled. The scary part is that I did not hit anything and I was not carrying any weight in the back. I was able to limp the truck off the road to get it towed to a dealer. Since the truck was recently out of warrenty, dodge was unable to help me( my truck has ~ 54K miles). MY warrenty was 3 year 36K. The dealer told me I had to take it to an auto body shop for repair. The five star dealer that I took it to did not havea body shop associated with the joint. It is important to note the following...I bought the truck used with 16K in june of '05. Also, I understand that the previous owner (s) had a snow plow on the truck. Since the time of my ownership with this vehicle, u-joints in the front end have been replaced under warrrenty. I am very troubled by what happened.I guess I am looking at the bigger picture and I am wondering if there is a design flaw with the vehicle or if it was an isolated incident. If there are others out there that had a similar problem, thenit might be worth pursuing through the NTSB. I love the truck, but I would like the piece of mind knowing that it was safe during an emergency response!

 

The previous owner with a snow plow contributed to the demise of your control arms, I know even on my 2500 diesel 4x4 I would have to upgrade to the snow plow prep package to safely hold the weight of the big steel snow plow blade.
Once you get the arms replaced you should never have to worry about it again, may also want to check the shochs and front springs also.

 

That is pretty troubleing and the first time I've heard of something like that happening. I agree with the previous poster that it's likely the snow plow used by the previous owner propbably helped things along...do you know if it had the snow plow kit ?

In any case if you've gotta pay for it perhaps it'd be worth it to consider aftermarket control arms ? Cost could be close or maybe even better and some of the lift kits (you hopefully wouldn't have to lift if) they are substantialy stronger....either way sorry to hear about your ride. My house is in the hills and around this time of year its very common to encounter mule deer. I've not hit one in my current truck (knock on wood) but both my wife and I have hit them in other vehicles. Scares the crap outta ya and in both cases there was nothing we could to do to avoid it....

 

Thanks...I hope you are right!!! I just hope nothing else on the front end was damaged. The repair will be approx $400. Each lower control arm is $134. They will also have to do a front end alignment.