Just replaced my tie rods and track bar since mine was wandering around. Took it in to have an alignment and the guy showed me how the passenger side ball joints were bad. Real nice guy showed me how to do it myself if I wanted renting a press tool from Auto Zone and buying the ball joints from ONLY Advance Auto (said the other local parts store's stuff doesn't last) but I had him do it since I'm in a hurry to get this thing road ready for a cross country trip. He also told me if I experience DW to look at the bushings on the lower control arms to the A-arms. I guess these are the same as on a 1500 and are pretty flimsy. May wanna have a look there.

 

I don't know why they went bad, and at 75,000 miles, the extended warranty people tried to call it normal wear. The service manager at the Firestone I'm dealing with blew them out of the water!! Hehehehehe, that was fun and funny to watch. Anyhow, the warranty people are reluctantly paying for it, minus my deductible and taxes. Still $192 out of pocket for a $1400 repair? I'm not complaining!!

Anyhow, I've done a little research into the problem and this is apparently a little more common than people think. I can't speakabout the '03 and '05's or similar, but the '04 4x4's apparently are suffering from this alot.

Went to the NHTSA website and found a few complaints about ball joints going bad.

Also found earlier threads regarding similar problems. Many more than I pasted here:
https://dodgeforum.com/m_36621/tm.htm
https://dodgeforum.com/m_9175/tm.htm
https://dodgeforum.com/m_9175/tm.htm