A friend of mine "in the business" had one of these and gave it to me wholesale, which is still not cheap, lol. More than a factory type replacement from RockAuto, but less than the Moog ones.

You can see the difference in the pictures below. This arm is wider, thicker, and does not have the "c-channel" type design of the factory arm, so it's not only thicker, on the edges -- it's much thicker in the middle.

You can also see how much bigger the ball joint is. I don't know if these ball joints can be changed out without changing the arm -- I suspect not (I'll find out though).

However, this ball joint is so much bigger it's not funny. Also, the tiny hole in the top of the new one is for a zerk fitting (which I hadn't installed yet) -- yes, these are greasable. They are filled right now with PAO based waterproof TomPac 2557 all-synthetic grease.

Maybe someone posted on these before, but I thought I'd add my impressions.

I just put this on the left upper on my truck. The [edit] RIGHT upper got replaced 6 weeks or so ago for state inspection. My stock one was worn enough that you can FEEL the looseness with your fingers pulling/pushing on the ball -- but not as bad as my other one was.

I wasn't going to buy one this good since I'm throwing away the suspension when I put the SAS on, but it was a deal and will stand up well in the meantime -- or so I hope, lol.

 

Those look great, John. I think my DS upper is going out (18,000 miles). I'm still under warranty, so I might let the dealer replace it. Next time, though, those could be a possibility. If appearances mean anything, they should be three times as good as the stockers.

 

Those are beefy!

 

Nice - I'm going to look into those shortly. I'm going to replace all the front end crap which should have zerk fittings.....

 

I didn't get any specs AT ALL, lol. This was a casual conversation with a motorhead friend about how I'm going to be doing a SAS eventually, but I'll be burning through ball joints and I need to replace one, etc. etc...and then he said he had one and gave it to me for what he gets them for (which I'm not supposed to say, lol).

No specs, no research, just a "wow" from me and "I'll take it, thanks!" I've got the Dana-Spicer number out in the truck. I'll post it later for reference to make searching on it easier.

This is not a case of me doing some research and deciding what to buy, this was just a fortunate opportunity.

 

I did both my uppers with Moog, and they are great. The pass side could be pulle out of socket...guess it was time to replace!