The rubber on all four ball joints - both sides, upper and lowers, have deteriorated. Anyone have this problem? My truck has not been off road and is taken care of like a new one all the time (only 49,000 miles). Not 4wd. I checked with Ford dealer and there is no recall. Their cost to replace was a bit over $550!

chris

 

$550? no way, replace them yourself.. btw mine went at ~60k and I dont do any offroading.

 

I had premature worn out lower ball joints on my '01 Ranger. You could see that the rubber was torn and coming out of the joint. When going over a bump you could hear a clunking/rubbery squeaky sound coming from the front end. This happened with only about 41,000 miles on the od. I had the lower joints replaced. The clunking/rubbery sound came back after about only three days. So now I'm wondering like you-what to do? Do I replace the upper joints also in hopes that will fix it or could the sounds be due to a worn tie rod? Can anyone help with this? Also is it possible that when Ford put the 4.0 v-6 in the Ranger that the weight of it was too much for the suspension for which it was designed for?

 

Check the upper ball joints, the boots on mine were torn but instead of buying new upper control arms with the integrated ball joints, i just regreased them and slipped on a new boot.. I'm gonna have to replace them though because I can feel play in the steering because of them, and my truck tends to want to wonder on the highway if i really dont hold the steering wheel.