E-450 ball joints

[Cuervo1]

Think I need to replace my ball joints. I have 109 k miles and some clunking noise when making hard turns.

I checked them the way my Dad taught me with a bar under the tire.

My research has indicated that  E 450's eat ball joints after 50- 60k miles, and Motorcraft ball joints suck,plus they are expensive.

Looking at Moog or Mevotech TTX. I understand Moog  quality has declined in recent years. I don't know much about the Mevotech brand but the TTX line looks interesting.

Has anyone had any experience with these ball joints ?

 

[wae]

I've been using the Moog problem solvers on my P30 chassis and on my Super Duty and they've been fine for me.  I've put some Mevotech parts on a couple cars and haven't had any premature failures with those either. 

You might also check the sway bar - I am at about 100% for front end noises being caused by loose, worn, or missing sway bar bushings and end links.  Wheel bearings can also cause all sorts of weird symptoms and noises - I had one that I was starting to price ABS module rebuild services on due to an intermittent *really* soft brake pedal that was 100% cured with new front wheel bearings.  But it if you've been in there with a pry bar, watching what's moving back behind the dust shield, then you are on the right track!

 

[Memtb]

  I didn’t worry too much about mine with only 130K miles (2007 Ram 3500), until this past fall....when the truck went straight through a turn, narrowly missing the side of a cattle guard. Thankfully we were only going about 15 mph on an icy dirt road, and......we’re “not” towing our 20K 5er, only our small UTV trailer.
  The truck didn’t have any obvious signs of tie-rod end problems, noise, slack in steering, etc. Our “only” warning that something was awry .....was our abrupt departure from our intended route.  So....replace to the heaviest duty front end components available for your particular model truck. While we were down, we replaced all 4 ball-joints, the aforementioned tie-rod ends/links, and  the stabilizer. The “only” component “seemingly” OK was the “pitman arm”.  This “seems” to be an especially noteworthy issue with the Rams!    memtb

 

[Charlie 5320]

I just replaced all the ball joints on my P32 chassis MH with Moog joints. They looked much better than the cheap ones somebody else attempted to install in mine. I even bought them thru Walmart, was about 1/2 the cost as other places,, including O'Reilys.

 

[Cuervo1]

Yes, I get it with the noises that could be caused by other components.

I was going to replace the brakes any way, New rotor wheel hub assembly with new bearings, and new calipers and pads..

I'm getting Centric rotors ,wheel bearings, and brake pads. Raybestos element 3 calipers, and mevotech  ttx  ball joints.

I'll do an update to see how it goes.

I'm also going to make a caster adjustment with adjustable caster/ camber adjustable sleeves. Recommend by Harvard the caster guru.

Hope this makes the handling better.