Ball joint recommendation

I was trying to figure out the right hand pull and bad wear pattern on my front tires despite pretty much all new steering parts and the alignment measures spot on by tape. Lo and behold, even though they looked new when I bought the jeep last year, the ball joints have play. U joints are shot too, so, awesome. Looks like moog are in it, I was thinking of going with spicer but several reviews say the spicers sometimes fit too loose. Going to be in it that deep im going to do axle seals as well. Probably won't have time or funds to do it until Thanksgiving, just want to know what brand I need to be grabbing.

Moog have been a popular choice when this question has come up before.

From what I have gleaned over time Moog's quality has not improved over the past few years. It is entirely possible the Moog ball joints you have were indeed new last year and have already gone to pot.

It is also entirely possible that if you now try to put in Spicer ball joints you will indeed find them to be too loose. Not because they are out of tolerance, but because Moog decided to "solve" any problems regarding being too loose by making their ball joints oversized. IOW, you may be stuck with Moog and stuck with replacing them frequently.

Good luck.

Well I just put in the upper control arm bushing that was almost completely gone and I cleaned up the upper ball joint while I had the wheel off. It is just black with no wording so maybe another brand? Moog will usually have a gold backing plate that says moog problem solver on it right?

Anak said:

From what I have gleaned over time Moog's quality has not improved over the past few years. It is entirely possible the Moog ball joints you have were indeed new last year and have already gone to pot.

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I hadn't realised that Moog had gone downhill. I am fairly certain all of mine are Spicer. I haven't changed any in a long while. The only thing I have been aware of recently was to avoid knurled ones if the plain style are still tight. Thanks for the update.

Vince said:

I hadn't realised that Moog had gone downhill. I am fairly certain all of mine are Spicer. I haven't changed any in a long while. The only thing I have been aware of recently was to avoid knurled ones if the plain style are still tight. Thanks for the update.

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I have heard conflicting points of view on the subject, but the conclusion that I have drawn is that Moog is probably okay if you stick to pavement, but it does not cut it for anyone who goes off-road. And the knurled ball joints are a one way street. As soon as you start down that path you are committed to it for the life of the axle.

I'm running Teraflex ball joints.

XRF

--Matt