New ball joints?

Whidbey Goblin

Well-Known Member
I cleaned up and painted my control arms today. I already ordered new moog rear bushings. I noticed while prepping my control arms the ball joints are extremely stiff. I need to use a lot of force to move them by hand. Has anybody cut the rivets out and replaced the ball joints on OEM control arms?
 

Whidbey Goblin

Well-Known Member
I cleaned up and painted my control arms today. I already ordered new moog rear bushings. I noticed while prepping my control arms the ball joints are extremely stiff. I need to use a lot of force to move them by hand. Has anybody cut the rivets out and replaced the ball joints on OEM control arms?
 

Whidbey Goblin

Well-Known Member
My concern is if the ball joint doesn’t move freely the suspension wont move freely. Any resistance in suspension travel hampers performance, especially at higher speed. Is that just the nature of this suspension set up?
 

k.rollin

Goblin Guru
Cutting the rivets and bolting on new ball joints can be done, and I'm reasonably certain that someone on the forum has done it before. That said, when faced with ball joint failure from the donor, most of us have opted to just buy new control arms given the level of difficulty vs additional expense.
 

socaljeff3798

Well-Known Member
I bought a whole front end kit but you can buy the complete control are for about 75 bucks. from Rock auto. They have several choices.
MOOG KIT421
Front; w/Performance suspension (RPO code FE3)
$264.
 

Gtstorey

Goblin Guru
Ball joints are supposed to be stiff. If they move easily by hand, they are to loose.

If you have the SS/TC, getting just the ball joints can be problematic. The ones I received had the wrong stud size, but others got the right size with the same part number.
 

Ark :D

Goblin Guru
If you have the SS/TC, getting just the ball joints can be problematic.
He's an 05 SS/SC, so he doesn't need to worry about that.

(On a side note, I had enough trouble getting the correct ball joints that I downsized the rear end from SS/TC stuff to SS/SC/NA stuff)
 

Waterdriver

Goblin Guru
I cleaned up and painted my control arms today. I already ordered new moog rear bushings. I noticed while prepping my control arms the ball joints are extremely stiff. I need to use a lot of force to move them by hand. Has anybody cut the rivets out and replaced the ball joints on OEM control arms?
Yes.
See here and following posts.
 

OptimizePrime

Goblin Guru
Those ball joints look fine. I cut out the rivets and replaced mine and if I were to do it again I'd just buy all new control arms - it's not worth it.

 

jamesm

Goblin Guru
My donor needed bushings and ball joints, it was like $20 more to buy brand new, complete control arms than it was to buy the individual parts from Rock Auto so I replaced the entire control arm.
 
Top