Well my brother and i are getting ready to replace our lower ball joints on an 01 and 02 edge. Uppers will be later on. We both just replaced wheel bearings too. I have a clunk over speed bumps that i am hoping to be cured with this. On my bros truck there is about 3/4 of an inch of up and down movement of the spindles when moving them my hand.

my question is about ball joint brands. I have a bunch of choices. my brother picked up the nice brand from napa (45 bucks each) which he was told are made by spicer and and that they are the best ones. there are also the house brand at napa. Oreillys has house brand for 15 and nice (moog?) for 45. i hear that the moogs are trash ford trucks though. Autozone has them for 15/30 dollars and the 30 dollar ones are made by duralast i think and come with a limited lifetime warranty that i can bring in shot ones and they replace them. im not sure on warranty for the other ones.

I dont have 100 dollars to be spending now, so i was thinking about the 30 dollar ones from autozone. Im going to do my brothers truck and see how much of a pain they are to replace. if its something thats easy i would rather go with the cheaper ones

Also i picked up a seperator fork to use. The process looks pretty straight foward to me, but does anyone have any tips?

about the alignment right afterwards. if i wait until i go back to austin at the end of the week i can get allignments for free. would this be ok. i would put less than 50 miles on it. then rotate my tires then a 150 mile drive to austin. im hoping that this should be fine so that i can save the sixty dollars.

thanks

Lee

 

I would buy the Moog ones They are great quality. I wouldn't worry about the alignment for such a short distance of driving.

 

Moog!! They are awesome! I love mine.

 

honestly.....

engine electrical and suspension parts are areas to NOT skimp on. Get moogs or spicers. Sure...$50-60 a pop...but well worth it.

check out http://www.rockauto.com. i got complete uppers and lowers...moog brand...shipped for UNDER 300. go to autozone or antoher store and price the exact parts out....ran 475.

 

My upper moog Ball joints were $100 a piece.

 

I went for the NAPA ball joints, the ones with the blue boots.
They looked pretty good, especially since the Moog "problem solvers" were needing to be replaced.

I've got ~45k on the NAPA's and they're still tight.

 

i just redid my 97 and i used eveything moog. everything as in tie rod ends both inner and outer and upper and lower ball joints