Question about upper ball joint length

I'm in the middle of replacing all four ball joints. Got the old ones off and the lowers swapped out. The uppers, however, are longer than the ones that came out. I've searched through all of the messages here and saw a couple of references to that, but the threads just end with no final resolution. I got the ball joints from AutoZone, but I have also checked O'Reilly and Advanced. Everyone has the same ones and none match the ones that came off of my jeep. The shaft that comes out of the ball joint is longer on the new ones and it just doesn't look like the knuckle will line up properly to me.

Any advice would be appreciated.

1999 Cherokee 2wd 4.0L

I'm just guessing here, but 99 saw a few changes in the Cherokee. Could be that you have a mid-year change over? Do 98s and 2000s get the same ball joints?

don't believe there is a balljoint change-over for those years... what knuckles do you have though? Is there a possibility that you have knuckles off a RENIX XJ or something else with a dana 30? Do the brake calipers bolt directly to the knuckle or is there a separate bracket that bolts in between?

yossarian19 said:

I'm just guessing here, but 99 saw a few changes in the Cherokee. Could be that you have a mid-year change over? Do 98s and 2000s get the same ball joints?

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Looks like everything around my year model uses the same ball joints.

kastein said:

don't believe there is a balljoint change-over for those years... what knuckles do you have though? Is there a possibility that you have knuckles off a RENIX XJ or something else with a dana 30? Do the brake calipers bolt directly to the knuckle or is there a separate bracket that bolts in between?

Click to expand...

The brake calipers bolt directly to the knuckle.

Here is a picture of the old one and the new one.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/daronj/6067632821/in/photostream

I think mine looked like that too. Have you tried pushing the shaft into the upper balljoint a bit by hand? The upper will float in and out of the socket a bit to make up for machining differences in the inner C and knuckle, the lower balljoint is the only one that positively locates the knuckle vertically.

kastein said:

I think mine looked like that too. Have you tried pushing the shaft into the upper balljoint a bit by hand? The upper will float in and out of the socket a bit to make up for machining differences in the inner C and knuckle, the lower balljoint is the only one that positively locates the knuckle vertically.

Click to expand...

Thank you sir. I just tried it and the shaft does slide in and out. I really appreciate the info. I should have come here first. Would have saved me an entire afternoon of driving around looking for the correct darn ball joint.

Thanks again!
Daron