Loose Lower Ball Joint

[MSGia]

Good evening everyone. I am replacing the ball joints on my DJM lower control arms with Moog lower ball joints. After I pressed the new joint in and put the snap ring on, the ball joint came loose. The lower control arm only has 8,500 miles on it, and I had no trouble removing the old ball joint. Is this normal?

 

[JoshT]

Did you get the correct joints?

There are a couple of different joints used stock on Ranger lower arms. Different joints for torsion bar and coil spring. Also Moog sometimes offers two different diameters, standard size and a slightly oversized for worn ball joint cups.

 

[MSGia]

Did you get the correct joints?

There are a couple of different joints used stock on Ranger lower arms. Different joints for torsion bar and coil spring. Also Moog sometimes offers two different diameters, standard size and a slightly oversized for worn ball joint cups.

Thanks for the reply. I have the correct ball joint, but I did not know about oversized ball joints. I will try them. I don’t know why oversized ball joints didn’t come up in my search yesterday before I asked here though

 

[JoshT]

It's interesting that they are calling for the torsion bar ball joint on a coil spring truck. I don't know how they differ, but maybe that's part of the problem. Pure guess work there, I have no idea what DJM designed them for. They must be the same on the knuckle side at least.

The oversize of the one they list is D8695T006.

Numbers I've found on RockAuto suggest that it is sized for a 44.42 to 44.52 mm ID hole. Interestingly the standard coil spring joint appears to be sized for a 44.5 mm diameter hole.

 

[pjtoledo]

in past years I have used the same lower ball joints on my 2000 4x4 and 2005 2wd coil spring Ranger.
being high mileage I did need oversize on both.

 

[sgtsandman]

I've read where people have gotten aftermarket ball joints and found they didn't fit because of the cup issue. It turned out the original replacement had the bigger base and opened up the cup, thus when they went to replace them again, the proper size wouldn't fit. They, like myself, didn't know there was more than one size.

I believe ericphoto just ran into this recently.

 

[MSGia]

Thank you all for the replies. Don’t know if this is a dumb question or not.. How difficult is pressing the new joint supposed to be? I had to use my ratcheting breaker bar to fully seat it, it felt like I was forcing it in. The manual from the Moog site said not to install it the hole measured a certain ID, mine was within the range.

 

[JoshT]

It's definitely a press fit. Using those rental clamp tools it should take some force to press them in and out. Those tools are intended to prevent you from having to completely diassembly the front end and (maybe) get an alignment, not to make the joint easer to remove and install. The times I've used those, it was using a large 1/2" drive ratcheting breaker bar. I don;t think it was sold as a breaker bar, but it's just as long as the 1/2" breaker bar that dad has in the same drawer of the tool box.

Even with the arms removed and put in my 20 ton shop press, it takes some force (relatively speaking) to get the joints out. When they break loose on that they pop out with some force so you know they were in there tight.