Moog chassis parts went downhill. The quality isn't the same as it used to be. I figure stick to motorcraft. If the original part lasted 150k miles or so you know it will last about the same again.

 

I'm not crazy right... those boots should not be seeping grease the way they are and the inner tie rod should not have a boot completely off the groove. I emailed Moog about it asking if I have a quality problem or install error. Probably won't hear back lol

 

No one for sure can place judgment on if you are crazy until 200 posts, although sometimes it's possible after 2.

Moog was a sister division of the company I worked for, and back at the turn of the century, the people I worked with (did some testing for them) were proud of the quality of the product. Then Carl Ichan started working his magic of improving profits to make more money when selling the company. Eight years later, it was my time to improve the profits goal, but Moog started to hurt. I've got two sway bar links I need to send off for warranty, again.

I once discussed with the director of R&D at Moog about joints. Although the grease burping out is not a bad thing, pressure behind the boots is one of the reasons they split later on, and one of the reasons in an SAE research paper decades ago provided for developing sealed joints. Another was the amount of dirt typically injected when greasing since many people never fully clean zerks. The non-zerk joints also typically have a SS retainer ring to keep the boots in place.

If you are too aggressive when pumping the grease in, the boots can eject grease at the lip, and it may be possible that the boots no longer have pressure release holes due to cost-saving ways. However, I've found boots all too easy to come out of the groove when they do not have a ring. Some do not have a lip at all. The proper method is to stop at the first hint of boot expansion, as I was told.

All that said, play in the joint over such a short time is troubling unless you hear the ball and socket slamming together with rotation movement.

 

No one for sure can place judgment on if you are crazy until 200 posts, although sometimes it's possible after 2.

THIS. is a very true statement.

 

Also - when I first started working on vehicles in the late 2000's, when most of my stuff was my jeep, cars, or 1/2 ton gas trucks, I was told that MOOG was fine.

Since I've had heavier vehicles, I'd say 75% of the advice I get it is to stay away from Dorman and MOOG parts. And since I'm on my 3rd Dorman fuel pump in the past 6 months, I'm starting to get the hint.

 

Jack you continue to amaze me... please write a book with lots of pictures.

OP, those are moog problem starters on heavy/mid duty trucks, when you bought a diesel you cannot save a few dollars on parts.

 

OP, those are moog problem starters on heavy/mid duty trucks, when you bought a diesel you cannot save a few dollars on parts.

I see what you did there

lol

I had started hearing of MooG quality issues so when I did my Balljoints I went OEM but did try MooG on the tie rod ends the boots failed early and the tie rod ends lasted 1/4 as long as the originals ,, warranty thru MooG is a joke and I did not want more garbage anyway so I did the work again with OEM tie rods .. FUMOOG

 

I had good luck on my 06 with ac Delco tie rods and the track bar joint the moog I used the first time not so much

 

GD,

My entire automotive-related career had some surprising turns considering I grew up as a South Jersey farm boy with Hot Rod. PM and PS books under my bed from the age of 7, getting to talk to and work with some of the people I was in awe with from that age. A path laid in front of me without my trying.

Behind me, I still have the Hot Rod series from the '60s; you can see how much they were studied before the age of 10. After 10-12, I learned to take better care of books.

When I worked for a company in the '70s prototyping carbon fiber automotive components (we were the first) like pushrods, I worked with Smokey Yunick for a week. Someone I followed religiously from his columns. When I moved to brakes, we had to run our California brake tests out of Bill Stroppe's Telegraph Hill garage for a few decades. Tests took 3 weeks. While the vehicles were out 9-10 hours a day, I spend months literally in the garage talking to Bill Stroppe and all of his people. So many of the people I read about in those magazines would walk into Stroppe's garage, and I would be standing in the middle of old friends talking. The definition of deer in headlights situation. The line from Talking Heads - Once in a lifetime: Well, how did I get here?

In one picture I put up about my dozer, the background has my Ranger, inspired by Stroppe's Baja racing.

Roush Racing, when the CEO of our company was a driver of one of his race cars. Other people at SAE meetings and working with other automotive suppliers and manufacturers.

I had opportunities and exposure that I never dreamed of as an adolescent laying in bed reading those books. I wish everyone had those situations.

And off to my Christmas Tree farm....... where I grew up. Full circle. Still some books there.

 

Awesome Jack! We are blessed to know you, even if it's just on this forum!

 

I'm just another crazy guy.

I am grateful to learn the things I do from the forums and interact with people. We should never stop learning until the end.

 

Well crap! I didn’t know moog sucked when I put it on. Moog has always been a quality brand in my mind and I learned after they aren’t quite so anymore. I probably overfilled a little. Oh well. I replaced the old ones because the boots were old and splitting and I was getting a lot of wobble at freeway speeds. I guess I’ll let these joints run their short lived course and do oem parts when it fails. It never fully fixed the wobble but helped minimize it a lot.

 

Is oem pretty much the only ones y’all recommend? Not ac delco?

 

AC Delco is an OEM brand, but normally for GM.

 

Ive had good luck with moog on light duty cars but have avoided them for trucks last 6 or so years. I went with oem on my f250 as the old ones lasted 15+ yrs before any issues. I did add some zerks even small angles ones for the top ball joints etc. I use a special Lisel 90degree zerk adapter on the grease tool too.

 

How did you add zerks?

 

When the top ball joints were replaced it had a TINY little bolt threaded into the center. I unscreded it and put a zerk in. Sometimes you cant add traditional zerks to some ball joints because they dont fit so companies came out with angled and low profile ones. Also not all ball joints have the little tap for a zerk.

 

spicer won't have any provision for zerks on these balljoints , they are lubed for life and their reason is many folks ruin their own parts by pushing dirt or the wrong grease into the part

before you think it is a horrible idea just remember how long OEM last

I did drill and tap my OEM track bar ball joint for a Zerk but you risk metal intrusion and the bearing is likley set up different ( grease distribution )

 

I’ve had poor experiences with Moog too. I bought a track bar and sway bar bushings from them a while back. I had to return them. The track bar was about 1/8” longer than my factory one, which was enough to make it not fit. I thought I was crazy until I compared them. The sway bar bushings were completely shot out of the box. They fit nicely around the sway bar itself, but did not fit snugly at all inside the brackets

The previous owner installed all 4 Moog ball joints, they’re holding up so far. But the grease fitting threads came gooned from the factory on the drivers side upper, making it nearly impossible to get grease in

I like genuine Ford parts for ball joints, tie rods, drag link, etc. recently replaced all my steering components with oem stuff and the fitment was perfect


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OEM is spicer right? I mean I like the zerks because I do know how to do it correctly. But I also know spicer is very good at what they do and trust that.

 

OEM is Dana Spicer for Ball Joints and u-joints
but for the tie rods I went straight to ford I did not see them in the Dana Spicer lineup but I still think they are the supplier

 

I never changed the track bar joint when I did the steering. So I guess I’ll go to oem and do that joint and probably sway bar links by that time.

 

I’ll just going to throw out ...... while Dana/Spicer may be the assembly line supplier, buying a Dana/Spicer replacement part may not be the same part.

My old company was a supplier of assembly line parts for many manufacturers, but what we designed and made under contract was exclusive to the customer. And in most cases, I’ll use Ford; they paid for the tooling; it was theirs. We could not use the tooling to make parts for the aftermarket or anywhere else. The design and materials were locked to Ford.

So, if a company wants to supply a like product for not to Ford, it will not be exactly the same. Some of the components might be compromised to compete in the aftermarket lower price market. But if you are proud of your product, and people know you are the OE supplier, you can demand a higher price and use goos components, let's say halfway between the other guy and what was supplied to the assembly line.

Getting the part from Ford used to be fairly straightforward. Everything was like the assembly line but maybe included some aspects that were not ready for the assembly line. The Assembly line has the tightest spec.

What happened since around 2000-2001 is that companies are trying to support dealer sales to jobbers. So as you go through the dealer parts guide, you see multiple choices, labeled warranty or service, and the service parts are cheaper. Those service line parts may not even be made by the company that provided assembly line and warranty parts. We were one of those companies, our products were assembly lines, were warranty, and we supplied service for the same vehicle, but other models as well, keeping our competitors from supplying service parts while they still supplied assembly line and warranty.

Half of my work was for the OE side of the company’s product line and the other half for the aftermarket. The engineering (design), materials, and manufacturing specs were never alike; there’s no way to compete in the aftermarket on price. You can for the assembly line because the volume of parts is high, and you don’t have to compete on pricing.

Having said all that, I buy Dana/Spicer parts all the time. It's damn close to assembly line quality, if not the same.

 

IMO if any part was going to meet or exceed an OEM spec part, it would be a Dana Spicer part

 

Well I’m talking buying the parts from the dealer or getting motorcraft at like rock auto or something

 

Regardless of where you go, you'll want to buy Spicer or OEM (Motorcraft), typically. Rockauto isn't always cheapest. Sometimes eBay, Amazon, or I recently found racor or dieselfiltersonline. Sometimes it's best to search here and see or ask. But, in summary, I've learned with anything that pertains to the performance of this truck - to go OEM.

 

i bought my motorcraft tierod ends from Rock Auto they were the best deal but the shipping to AZ is slow and I don't really like their website

 

All my friends are Municipal or Fleet Mechanics. They tell me what I need to get and I go get it. They also tell me to use Rock Auto as much as I can as the price is usually better for the OEM stuff.
That may be true but like you, I hate that website and would rather pay a little more to find what im looking for without a decoder ring required .
Maybe its easier for them as there used to Auto Part Store computer programs to look for parts. Me, I hate telling you the color of my truck to determine what Wiper Blade I need.

 

Nooooo. And avoid Delphi.

 

Well I'm gonna let these joints die first before I replace it. Probably won't take long if the boots keeps coming more and more unseated and dirt gets in. Oriley's said they will warranty it but I don't want more Moog

 

Be careful with ac delco. People see that name and think great quality. There are actually 3 grades/lines of ac delco parts: advantage, professional, and oe.

90% of the ac delco parts on rock auto are the advantage line, which is a far cry from what you find on gm trucks from the factory


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