Early Failure of SPC UCA Ball Joints? (1 Viewer)

[ed94r]

I have over 90k miles on my SPCs (greasable). I’ve just started to get a bit of ball joint movement, which doesn’t surprise me given I offroad it a fair amount. I get the feeling that early adopter issues will cloud these forever, even though the newer design is solid. These have never given me concern, as someone that goes solo in the backcountry often. I am planning on replacing the ball joints, but I think 90k miles is pretty reasonable given my use case.

Obervation:

My SPC arms with replacement (updated) grease-able BJ's failed around 30-40K street miles (see post 9). This is primarily my wife's truck, and the only off road it ever see's is sand. This said, they are still on the truck with the new replacement for the replacement non zerk fittings which are what are available now on the SPC site.

Am an early adaptor? Yes
Have I seen failures of 2 of the 3 versions of the ball joints with 99% street use? Yes
Are the arms still on my truck? Yes (this is, however the last straw. If the "new" maintenance free BJ's crap the bed once more, they are coming off)

The jury is out for me...but I think i'm in a pretty decent position to judge as I'm not wheeling the thing to death. The odds of me being affected by 2 different lots/batches of BJ's and no one else being similarly affected are low. I'm not gonna tell anyone NOT to buy them, but my experience is my experience...we'll see how these new BJ's hold up.

 

[Kofoed]

See post #9. How sure are you that the zerk is the "new" version? Context: not trying to be combative...actually really want to know my self as I've been full circle from no zerk, to zerk, back to no zerk.

CAll SPC

 

[Bisho]

I ordered 25002s today. Every site I checked, including SPC, says they are the current/best and they have greaserts.

 

[UZJ100LC]

i called spc a few weeks ago. the newest most updated upper ball joint is a maintenance free ball joint with no zirk fitting.

 

[whitec13]

Had to, sorry gents.

 

[Bisho]

Funny, I checked again and now the SPC links I find say maintenance free, but the same model number shows greaserts on websites. I actually hope I get the greasable ones, given the good performance I’ve had with them.

 

[ed94r]

...and for all the reason above, caveat emptor

 

[Bisho]

Got the new ball joints, and they are maintenance free.

 

[Bisho]

Got this from SPC. You can convert the new ball joints to greasable if you care to.