Well last Monday while driving home from work it happened. Crossed over some mild railroad tracks and as soon as the suspension compressed on the backside of the tracks. BOOM!!! I thought a bomb went off in the passenger side floor board. I slide about 200 fewer into an oncoming lane and came to a tire twisting stop halfway in the ditch on the wrong side of the road. I was only traveling around 25- 30 mph. Appears the LBJ on passenger side sheered in two. This was a replacement Moog ball joint with maybe 6 - 8,000 miles on it. Just a brief inspection the parts list looks like: new ubj, lbj, CV axle, tre, maybe a brake line, alignment and hopefully just a re- balance on the tire?
I am kinda at a lost, I will admit that my truck is a mall crawler with its 3" spacer lift. But I feel like it is somewhat the cause of the failure. Not sure if I should replace both lowers with oem and keep driving it or just repair and sell or just spend the money on smaller tires and new parts to lower it? What do you guys think? I had no prior symptoms leading to this failure.

 

Here are the pictures.

 

CV axle, unless it got damaged, can be re-booted with a kit from the Toyota dealer. IMO, only use Toyota parts for these components.

 

Early failure of Moog ball joints have been posted before. Nice of it to not damage fender or door, at least, noticeably.

 

Wow, when mine let go it was not nearly so violent but then I was only going ~5mph. At first I thought I just hit a pot hole I didn't see but I never came out of it and heard a rubber sound and hissing air, so just calmly pulled off the road.

 

Looking at how it failed, there wasn't anything wrong with the installation, it was purely the part itself letting go.

I'm surprised Moog hasn't been sued yet, if one failed at speed on the highway and caused a *big* wreck...

 

That's some scary stuff. BRB gonna check my LBJs...

 

Well just did a visual inspection with the wheel off...
Need new outer tie rod, lower ball joint x2, upper ball x2, cv axle, 8 new l.b.j. bolts and a new tire. Total cost of parts about $800.00 without including an alignment.
Going to do upper and lower ball joints on the driver side with oem just for the sake of it. I just re-did the whole front steering and suspension with moog parts last feb.

 

I would contact moog and see if you can get them to pay for it. They might njust in fear of law suit

 

Wow really bummed for you man and thankfully you weren't going too terrible fast. After that failure I would definitely only use OEM.

87 4runner 22re 5speed *traded*
93 xtra-cab 22re 5speed

 

Looks like the soft brake line may have been pulled/stressed too. Hard to tell from the pic though.

I'd raise all kinds of noise with Moog. This is a dangerous problem.

 

Holy crap!!!

 

Yeah I'm sure Moog will be scared of an angry phone call. You can sue them, but the second it becomes known that there is even 1 aftermarket performance part on the vehicle (lift!), you'll be liable for $50,000 of their defense fees in addition to your layer own fees.

 

I would only use Toyota parts for something this critical.



Andreas

 

I would venture the part that failed was made on the west side of the Formosa straits ??

It is a real shame Moog was once the go to brand of suspension parts

i wonder did your suspension changes effect things enough to cause the early failure??