bad day, how much will it cost?

[hank]

got a call from my girlfriend who borrowed my truck. seems one of the front ball joints gave out while she was going down the highway. metal on metal crunching and grinding is how she described it, she felt the front end drop an inch or two.

i called a shop close to her that i trust and had it towed there. from what i know about ball joints, i'm figuring i'll need to replace all four if i replace one. having never worked on ball joints before i'm a bit unfamiliar with what it might cost.

i'm a pretty good mechanic, but usually pay if the jobs going to be too big. what do ya'll say, expensive job at the shop? or tow it home and do it myself? are the parts hard to find?

thanks for any help.

[Bowtie67]

Ball joints somewhere around $35 ea. About an Hour ea. Should check out whole frontend for wear, Tie rod ends, idler arm, draglinks, upper & lower control arm bushings, Plus any other damage that may have occured, then get it aligned..
Also Note: not sure what year you have but if drum brake setup, might want to consider late model front end swap and go with disk brakes.. JMO

[hank]

thanks.

yeah, i have front discs allready. i don't know the extent of the damage, but am crossing my fingers.

[Tx Firefighter]

Lower balljoints wear much more than uppers. They carry all of the load of the trucks front end. You might not need all four, just the bottom two.

Kind of like brakes, the fronts wear out like 4 times faster than the rears.

[MrGoodpliers]

They aren't terribly difficult to install, but maybe a bit time consuming. If still equipped with the original uppers (and you elect to replace them), you will have to remove 4 rivits per arm then the new ones get bolted in. The lowers are pressed in, and your local Autozone has the press in thier "loan a tool program"

[Longhorn Man]

Somethign to think about though, your lower A arm, or both lower a arms may be worn to the point of being Junk...the price will go up real fast if this is the case.

[Blue Beard]

Consider her lucky.........could have been worse.......at least she knew how to handle it and didn't freak out....

[hank]

bluebeard, that is so true. she handled it great. thank goodness i didn't have to have HER towed to the shop. everything else is just the small stuff.

thanks for all of the info so far.