Well?

 

hey bud i feel ur pain bc the same thing happened to me but i was going 55mph and since i have uniball uppers the tire blew out and such but i did all the work myself and came out to be 800 for me hope urs isnt too much

 

That all the bolts and nuts were still there. That white line I left down the road was the result of the bolt/nut on the lbj dragging.

 

My credit card now has a big hole burned in it but at least my insurance covered a little over half of the cost and I have my 4runner back minus the bump stops which are on order.

Any who, how is this for failure of the ball joint?

 

whats it look like under the boot

 

I hope you went with OEM this time.

It looks by the pic that the Moog LBJ boot lost all its grease quite some time ago, thus all the pitting on the ball. And I am not sure that the ball is the right size. If you have a dial caliper, measure this one against the OEM if it is not already pressed on the 4 runner.

 

The shop (dealer?) should have moved the bumpstops from the old arms to the new ones. They have a threaded stud.

I replaced my lower control arms, upper balljoints and lower balljoints last year using all Toyota parts. The arms did not come with bumpstops installed, so I swapped them over.

If a Toyota dealer installed the new arms for you, they should be ashamed of such shoddy and incomplete work...


Andreas

 

Thanks for the pics, i have been him-hawing around about getting the uni-ball UCA's and replacing the lower BJs and the tierod ends. My wife took one look at those pictures and instantly authorized the purchase ANY part needed to avoid similar disaster.

 

To those whom this has happened to has your 4runner felt the same afterwards?


Every so often it feels like the whole front end gets a little sloppy/loose.

 

What all was replaced when they fixed it? I would have ALL the front end suspension parts changed out after something like that then get a good alignment. No telling what could have got damaged after that.

 

Both upper and lower ball joints, cv axle, brake lines and line to the abs sensor.

 

Personally i would have all the tie rods, inner and outer, ball joints ect changed on both sides of the truck. It is not unthinkable that something got tweaked during all of that chaos.

 

The balljoints on early Tacomas and 96 to 04 4runners, Tundras and Tacomas are all non failsafe designs. The ball is above the lower control arm which leads to the ball constantly being pulled apart from its socket. When it fails it will totally separate causing the arm to drop to the road. Toyota has since switched to the failsafe design which compresses the ball into the socket instead of trying to pull it apart. The ball is under the lower control arm now instead of on top of it...05 and up Tacomas, 4Runners, FJ Cruiser and new Tundras. If the ball gets worn and loose it will not pull apart and drop on the road.