How to Grease Truck Ball Joints

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Nate McCullough on behalf of Expert Village. In the following clips, we're going to talk about the correct procedure for replacing your upper and lower ball joints on a two wheel drive full size vehicle. What I'm going to do is put this right up next to my mic so you can hear it clunking around. Now what I'm going to do is give you a little comparison between the factory part and the replacement part. Now I spent a couple extra bucks on the replacement part, and you can see what you get out of it. I want you to pay particular attention to the size of the replacement joint. You can see that it is much larger than what Ford gave us. See the difference in sizes? There's also a hole in my replacement joint. What that's for, is a grease fitting. You can actually maintain this replacement. The reason why this one failed, is it ran out of grease and friction deteriorated my ball and socket fitting. This one here, if properly maintained, should last the life of the vehicle and never need to be replaced again. What I'm going to do now as far as prepping my new ball joint for reinstallation is insert the grease fitting into the hole. You take it and start the threads in, right like so, and I'm going to snug it down with my quarter inch ratchet and a seven millimeter socket. It's very small, pay particular attention not to over tighten it. That's plenty, right there. Our ball joint is ready for installation on to the vehicle. That's the proper way to do your grease fitting and I just wanted to give you the information on if you spend a few extra dollars for your replacement parts, you'll get a heck of a lot more beef, which will get you a heck of a lot more miles."