How do you know when you need new ball joints on a 98 EXP. 2WD? | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

  • Register Today It's free!

How do you know when you need new ball joints on a 98 EXP. 2WD?

balljoint1

New Member
Joined
February 3, 2007
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Year, Model & Trim Level
98 XLT 2WD
The mechanic said that I need new ball joints on my 98 Explorer 2wd. The boots are cracked but I have not noticed sny problems while driving. The dealership wants $1032.00 to install new ball joints and do an alignment is this a fair price?
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year or try it out for $5 a month.

Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





The specs say that you should have less than 1/32" (0.8 mm) play in the ball joint. So if you lift the front wheel(s) off the ground and try to move the top and bottom of the wheel in and out of the wheelwell, you should not get more than 1/32" movement. 1/32" is not much at all, so if you feel any movement, it is probably time to replace the ball joints.

The price you were quoted sounds high to me, I would try to get a couple of other estimates. If you are up for doing it yourself, there are at least a couple of threads on it, you can search for them.
 

Attachments

  • balljoint.jpg
    balljoint.jpg
    19.6 KB · Views: 495






Welcome to the site...I'd agree w/dogfriend on his assesment, and the price does seem really high. You can buy a balljoint tool for about $100 from Harbor freight and parts will cost you under $300 for all 4 joints. An alignment should cost between $50-$150

If you can't do it yourself take it to a garage that will install greasable joints like Moog or TRW. The Ford factory joints are junk...

FYI, moving the thread to the correct section.
 












The mechanic said that I need new ball joints on my 98 Explorer 2wd. The boots are cracked but I have not noticed sny problems while driving. The dealership wants $1032.00 to install new ball joints and do an alignment is this a fair price?

please tell me you are not serious.. last time i did all 4 of mine cause of one that snapped.. so one side was done while i was stuck half in the street. and it was raining also and top and bottom on that side took less than 1 hour from start to finish hardest thing was carrying the tools to the street..

other side in garage took less time.. not even with a press.. i used hammers and sockets and a jack to press in..
so simple. please do not be suckered in and pay that much money,
if you were close by i would do it for you. for $150.00 plus parts. maybe 3 to 400 total..
 






Yup Meineke did my wife's 2000 Explorer for $65 for the passenger side lower, would have been $130 for each side, but she only needed the one. She said she wasn't there for a half hour....I always tell her to wear a short skirt for inspection stickers too..........
 






Its not a hard job to do at all. I did all 4 ball joints, tie rod ends, sway bar endlinks and front shocks in about 4 hours and that was with a nice lunch break. Id say do it yourself and save all that money.
 






For that price I would take a round trip plane ticket from here to there and back. Wow that is expensive compared to here. I changed mine today for a total of $42.00.... Serious.... The alignment is simple. If all your four tires are the exact size make sure all four have same pressure. They should not be "out of shape" Take a string and tie it to your rear chasis behind the rear wheel.. Bring the string across the rear tire all the way to the front tire. It must go over the center of both wheels. If when the string touches the side of the front wheel nearest to you, it also touches the front side of the rear wheel, and the rear side of the front wheel, all at the same time then you have a 99.9% alignment. If confused pm me.

Sorry that should be $242.00
 






For that price I would take a round trip plane ticket from here to there and back. Wow that is expensive compared to here. I changed mine today for a total of $42.00.... Serious.... The alignment is simple. If all your four tires are the exact size make sure all four have same pressure. They should not be "out of shape" Take a string and tie it to your rear chasis behind the rear wheel.. Bring the string across the rear tire all the way to the front tire. It must go over the center of both wheels. If when the string touches the side of the front wheel nearest to you, it also touches the front side of the rear wheel, and the rear side of the front wheel, all at the same time then you have a 99.9% alignment. If confused pm me.

Sorry that should be $242.00

String method is great for toe-in, but won't do squat for caster and camber...

If you do hand-align your toe in..you will also want to make sure the wheels are slightly toed in towards each other. If you have them perfectly straight, the vehicle will jump around on the road. IIRC, the spec on toe in is around 1.5°. I've got my lifted X set so that the measurement across the front of the tires is about 1/16-1/32" less than across the back of the tires. With it set like this, the vehicle tracks quite nicely. With the toe in set at zero (bonehead at the alignment shop did that) the truck jumped all over the road and was scary to drive.
 






$1032 is not a high price from a dealer, everywhere else but not a dealer. I was quote $690 from tire store, I,m going start mine in a couple minutes. parts was $350 from oreilly
 






The mechanic said that I need new ball joints on my 98 Explorer 2wd. The boots are cracked but I have not noticed sny problems while driving. The dealership wants $1032.00 to install new ball joints and do an alignment is this a fair price?

we just went through that with our 1990 ford bronco. If you have the patients to do it yourself it will save you hundreds of dollars. My dad,husband and I replaced ours. The shop wanted about $800 to do it not including parts that they want 5 times the amout that we could get them for from advance auto. All the tools and parts we needed came to about $150 by doing it ourselves. Get yourself a book from your local auto parts store and that should walk you through it. You will need to buy or rent a tool to press the old ball joints out and to press the new oneese in. It's a little time consuming on the first side but once you get to the other side it's not so bad since you then know how to do it. My bronco is 4wheel drve so that was a bit harder because we had to take apart the 4 wheel drive parts the first side took about 6 hours the second side took about 2 hours. keep in mind if you have 2 wheel drive it should be much easier.
 






Back
Top