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Showing content with the highest reputation on 11/21/2014 in all areas

  1. Hi Fellas, Most of you already know how expensive those new Lexus front upper control arms are. 1st Generation - $660.00 a piece from the dealer. There are aftermarket bushings that you can install in the control arms but to my knowledge, no upper ball joints. When the ball joints wear out, you have no choice but to replace the control arm. On the internet I have found some control arms as low as $177.00 for the right side and $154.00 for the left side but I do not believe they are original equipment. But there is a cheaper fix if you can catch it early enough. You can drill a whole at the top of the ball joint and add a grease fitting and grease the joint. The joint seems to be made the same as ones that come with a grease fitting but with no hole. I did this on both of my upper control arm ball joints and it works great. You can also do this to the outer tie rod ends. But you cannot do this on the lower ball joint - not yet anyway. I'm working on it. If you catch it early enough, you can add this grease fitting and keep that ball joint greased and more than likely it will last the life of the car, then when your bushings/bearings wear out, you can replace them at a reasonable cost. It seems to me that many car manufacturers are doing this, not making joints to where you can grease them. Can you say, " No Maintenance?" But when they wear out you have to replace them $$$ DUH! Just another way for them to make a buck. My upper ball joints did have some slack in them and it seems by pumping the joint full of grease it really helped out. It made it much tighter and keeps the noise down. I changed the tie rod ends but I added grease fittings to the new ones. Hopefully I will never have to buy those again. I took the control arms out to do this. If you have an angle drill, you might be able to do this with the control arms on the car. 1. Centerpunch the the center of the top of the joint. (Be careful not to tear the boot if you have it off the car.) 2. Drill a 1/8 pilot hole. 3. Redrill a 3/16 hole. 4. Using a tapered short straight grease fitting, start it into the hole and tighten it up. I got mine from NAPA Auto Parts. 5. Reinstall the control arm. 6. Pump it full of grease and you are done. If you keep it greased on a regular basis, it should last the lifetime of the car. The upper control arm ball joint has very little pressure on it compared to the lower ball joint. This means that you will not ever have to buy a $$$ new $$$ upper $$$ control $$$ arm. Jerry
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