Originally Posted by cmf21

Finished on installing new ball joints and tie rods on my parents 2000 2wd 4runner. Everything went alright except for pressing back in the upper bj's and putting the moog boot on. We ended up going to a shop to press them back in. The new boots that came with the Moog's look different and are longer and look weird when squished. The tie rods were pretty simple.

Once we finished, we took it out for a drive. The alignment was off and the steering was pulling to the left but we didn't expect to hear any noises. The first sign something was wrong was when we were turning left. It sounded like something might be too tight or possible rubbing. We then started getting this whistling noise and more of that noise like something was too tight, etc. It wasn't a consistant noise but would come and go.

We made sure everything was torqued to spec and greased everything up. Besides the upper bj's looking funny with the squished boots, we don't have any ideas as to what it might be. We looked under the truck and bent the passanger side dust shield a bit since it looked like the tie rod had rubbed it a little.

Any ideas. Could the noises be from the alignment being off and rubbing on something or could could we have something to tight or could the it be that the brakes dragging a little? The brakes don't make any noise when we step on them. We don't have a clue what it could be wrong. It comes and goes with the rotation of the wheels.

Originally Posted by cmf21

After looking over everything tonight, we've discovered the upper ball joints are wrong. No wonder they were hard to install and looked wrong. Someone had put the wrong parts in the box or returned parts that didn't match what the box said. Also we discovered that outer tie rods are also wrong. One is from the problem solver line and the other not. One's made in Japan and the other USA. That's why the passanger side had a grease fitting and the other didn't.

Now the fun part is going to be calling Rock Auto and seeing what they are going to do. It's probably impossible to remove the upper ball joints since pressing them in was a pita since they were the wrong part and they will probably tell us they can't do anything and blame us for not making sure the parts are correct. How's anyone supposed to know when you receive two different parts in the wrong box that look exactly the same but different from the old. Most people like us would think they are an upgraded part. And the ties rods, how's anyone supposed to know when they use the same part numbers for different product lines and manufacture stuff in different countries.