Got new Tires, Quoted new Ball Joints, Which Axle?

[Longs]

I just purchased 4 new BFG Long Trails for my '93 Limited with 93k on it. Tires were $100 each + tax, price includes lifetime rotation, balancing, leak repair, full road hazard replacement first year, 50% second year. I was going to get an alignment, but the shop said I had a bad lower left ball joint, and the other lower was getting questionable. I had heard about the lower left from another shop when I was having the Radius Arm rivets removed.

I was quoted $232 per side to change the upper and lower joints - joints were $55 and $85, labor $90 per side (1-1/2 hours at $60 per hour). Alignment afterwards, $49.99. I get a 10% discount on top of these prices as part of an employee program.

I'm not sure if I want to take on the job myself - based on the Autozone website, I can get the upper and lower ball joints for about $50-$60 per side. Also, Autozone prompted me to specify either Dana 35 axle, or Dana/Spicer 28 axle. How would I know which I have? Were both versions used in '93 or is this just a function of Autozone's parts search engine?

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Longs

 

[mrboyle]

The price you were quoted is very reasonable considering the amount of work involved. As for the axle, all Explorers after '91 had Dana 35's.

 

[Longs]

Mike - thanks for the info. Based on what I've seen the price to replace the ball joints is reasonable, I just don't know if I want to lay out over $300 in parts markup and labor, versus doing the job myself.

 

[David S.]

I just had Big O Tires replace my upper and lower joints with Moog parts. With the alignment, the total came to just under $400. Did not want to mess with doing them myself.

 

[Longs]

That's better than the $460+ I'd be looking at with 4 ball joints and an alignment. I'm assuming that if anything else up front was bad, they'd have told me that it too needed a repair before the front end could be aligned. I recently changed the radius arm bushings myself, so I knew I'd eliminated that.