Moog, or the other guy.

swynx · Aug 1, 2017

Buddy of mine who is also my co-worker bought a 2002 f150 with a lift and 35s from our work (Ford dealership). I put it on the lift and all the joints are tight but the boots are torn.

Work quoted him 900$ for parts and labor, half of that was parts. It needs upper ball joints, inner and outer tie rods, an idler arm, and an alignment. I'll end up doing the work anyways I told him f that. We can do it for free on the weekend.

On rockauto we can cheap out and get the parts for 40$. Or we can buy it all for 140$ with moog problem solvers. I'm trying to convince him to go moog since its lifted.

Idk what parts well end up with from work, but motorcraft parts on rockauto are more than moogs, and I have yet to install motorcraft suspension/steering stuff at work. I understand there are something you only use motorcraft on, but I don't think tie rods count. Any opinions?

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IIBRONCOS · Aug 1, 2017

FWIW, I have always liked the quality and used MOOG.

jonathanh96 · Aug 1, 2017

Just saying, I had a Moog Problem Solver Tie Rod End that was professionally installed and failed with normal road driving in under 1,000 miles.

When contacted Moog they were unwilling to warranty or talk to me about it and kept telling me to talk to my dealer.

I am unhappy w/ Moog's customer service and product.
Why pay much more $ for the "better" brand when they have horrible customer service and they don't QC their products.

swynx · Aug 1, 2017

I have read that moog doesn't have the quality product they used to have. But I don't feel that motorcraft will be any better, unless bought from work and it gets warranty replaced.

I have had good luck with moog so far, there are bad apples everywhere I think. There is also acdelco parts at a middle price.

I'm not convinced that just because it's 4x the price it's that much better. He doesn't off-road much but it still has big tires so I don't think cheapo stuff would work for long

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adsm08 · Aug 1, 2017

I would go MOOG for the upper arms at least. The big reason is that MOOG makes theirs so the ball joint can be replaced without the whole arm once their arm is in. Ford/Motorcraft doesn't do that. When I worked at the dealer I would go Ford parts, then Moog.

jonathanh96 said:
Just saying, I had a Moog Problem Solver Tie Rod End that was professionally installed and failed with normal road driving in under 1,000 miles.

When contacted Moog they were unwilling to warranty or talk to me about it and kept telling me to talk to my dealer.

I am unhappy w/ Moog's customer service and product.
Why pay much more $ for the "better" brand when they have horrible customer service and they don't QC their products.

This is actually pretty typical of how the whole world works, not just Moog. It doesn't matter whose name is on the box, you go to the guy you bought the part from to get it warrantied out.

I bought a Motorcraft fuel pump from Rock Auto for my Bronco II and within 6 months the float had failed. Ford did 2 years unlimited miles for service part warranty at the time. I could not get Ford to warranty out the pump, even though I was working at a dealership. I ended up repairing the float myself rather than deal with getting it warrantied through Rock, just because of the shipping hassle.

The way it works is you buy Moog's part from Hometown Auto Parts, get it installed, and it breaks a month later. You take said broken part back to Hometown and they do a "defective exchange" and give you a new unbroken part, then they send the broken one back to Federal Mogul (owners of Moog) and FM sends them money for the failed part. Complicated and convoluted, yes, but its' how everyone does it.

As far as getting reimbursed for labor or extras like alignment, read the fine print on your warranty card, it says price of part only. Also how everyone does it. That is the only reason to buy parts through a shop, because if you do it that way and the part fails shortly after they will likely eat the cost of the labor to keep you happy.

swynx · Aug 1, 2017

I was going to ask about the whole arm thing to. I noticed half the parts say it won't fit an oem arm. Does he have an oem arm since it has a Rancho lift?

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4x4junkie · Aug 2, 2017

I've had problems with Moog joints also, three lowers over 1½ year's time all failed anywhere between 5000-12,000 miles, which is unacceptable in my book (two of the boots split open before I even finished building it initially). I've also had some of their TREs fail in less than 10K miles too.

Raybestos Professional Grade parts OTOH... 7 years and 40,000 miles now and still tight as new (the Spicer (what became Raybestos) joints on my Ranger are over 14 years old and same thing, still like new).

A caveat:
Federal Mogul bought up Raybestos (Affinia Group) a couple years ago, so I don't know yet if FM has flushed their quality down the toilet or not. I've seen what I think were FM Raybestos joints, which still appeared to be much better quality than the Moog Problem Solver joints, but I haven't actually used them yet. I would assume joints sold under the Motorcraft (as well as AC-Delco) name would still be reboxed Raybestos joints.

swynx · Aug 2, 2017

Maybe I'll just have him buy the acdelco parts then. They are a bit cheap than moogs, and I know they still make a quality product.

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85_Ranger4x4 · Aug 2, 2017

On my 2002 F-150 I have one Raybestos lower balljoint and one MOOG lower balljoint.

One was gold (Raybestos) and one was black (MOOG) Having not seen either of them for 2-3 years I haven't noticed a difference in them.

Shran · Aug 3, 2017

I have used the incredibly cheap Raybestos "service grade" parts from Rock Auto extensively in the past... they've been great. My rock crawler has about 10k miles on ball joints that cost $16 for the set of 4.

Other than their alleged reputation for high quality, Moog is no better than any other brand out there, although there are much lower quality parts floating around.

gw33gp · Aug 3, 2017

When I researched what is available for the upper ball joints, I found that there are different levels of quality in almost every major brand. I ended up with the higher quality Raybestos (spicer) A-arms and ball joints and I have been very pleased with them. I suspect the higher quality MOOG would be good too. The only problem is it is hard to tell sometimes if someone has substituted a lower quality part and just slapped a higher price on it.

I am still running the original factory lower ball joints and they and they are still solid with over 220K miles on them. Actually, the original upper ball joints were not all that bad but the boots were deteriorating. I siliconed them to get a few years more life out of them. When I started to hear a little knocking from them when off-road I decided it was time to replace.

swynx · Aug 3, 2017

I also have a mixed bag of upper lowers inners and routers. Never the off brand part tho. I have always used something I've heard of before. I also have had no problems. It seems as tho moog cost to much and I should still buy a lower cost but quality joint

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Moog, or the other guy.

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