Help: Kryptonite Control Arm Issues

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Mar 1, 2013
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Des Moines, Iowa
I had my truck up on the hoist for some work and did a routine front suspension shake down. Both my upper ball joints are shot, and the control arm bushings have about a 1/4 inch of slop in them. I got them to replace my wore out factory arms with the press in ball joints, and they made it about 5 years/30000 miles. The truck is lower than factory, but the Torsion bar bolts are still in. So the question is, were the original Kryptonite ball joints and bushings junk or are the arms giving me to much ball joint angle and causing them to wear out faster? Do I got back to factory style control arms? If I remember right, Moparkxracer had to flip his cognito upper control arms upside down to get a good angle, but that was on a very low truck.
 

Chevy1925

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Oct 21, 2009
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throw some pics up of the current arm angle and ball joint angle.

if you are running the arm adjusters with one way in and other way out, its going to induce wear into the bushings. a pic of where those are set currently would help too
 

ZeroGravity58

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Mar 23, 2008
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I know your not using cognito arms but when I lowered my truck I called cognito to ask. They told me to move the ball joint from under the control arm to on top of the control arm. Everything seems to be fine so far but I've only put about 2k miles on it. Everything went through alignment fine also.
 

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Mar 1, 2013
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Here are all 4 adjusters and the ball joint sitting at rest on the ground.
 

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Chevy1925

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no reason that stuff should have worn out that fast. i have 135k on the poly bushings of my fabtech UCA. little looser these days but no slop. you dont have near the angle that should be there to wear parts out that fast.
 

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Mar 1, 2013
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Well ordering NAPA ball joints NCP 260-1313 and kryptonite replacement bushings to fix the problems, I am not sure if I didn't grease them enough or just bad water ingress, but everything is covered in a brown rust crud.
 

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Chevy1925

don't know sh!t about IFS
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Oh wow, yeah definitely needs More greasing. Bushings look line they have had 0 since they were put in. Those napa joints will have a Teflon coating inside that will hold up better but still needs greasing.

How often were you greasing?
 

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Mar 1, 2013
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The bushings I think, never got greased since I installed them, I have never had issues with polyurethane bushings before with the stock control arms. The ball joints got greased one definitely, maybe 2 times since install.
 

Bdsankey

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The bushings I think, never got greased since I installed them, I have never had issues with polyurethane bushings before with the stock control arms. The ball joints got greased one definitely, maybe 2 times since install.

Yeah the front suspension components will benefit from a more routine greasing schedule. Every oil change I grease my truck. Takes a few minutes while you're under there but while the oil is draining. After some practice, you should be able to pretty much be done greasing by the time the oil is drained (depends on temp, viscosity etc).
 

Pure Diesel

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Apr 22, 2008
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Yeah the front suspension components will benefit from a more routine greasing schedule. Every oil change I grease my truck. Takes a few minutes while you're under there but while the oil is draining. After some practice, you should be able to pretty much be done greasing by the time the oil is drained (depends on temp, viscosity etc).

X2 :thumb: