Mevotech TTX Ball Joint FAIL

Could it be that the part numbers got mixed up? I only know what I've seen through RockAuto but I would presume that all LBJ's are universal. I wonder if they sent you the wrong PNs but based on your photos, they look correct. My LBJ's aren't bad per say, but I just wanted to knock everything out when I do a front end rebuild. I hope they square you away or at least give you nominal measurements so you can confirm for yourself.

-J

 

I’m pretty sure the factory LCA’s are heat treated. It’s kind of impressive how they sheared the splines off the TTX ball joints tbh. Even if they weren’t though, that sounds like an expensive solution. The TTX joints would need to be really, really good to justify it. I don’t expect them to last longer than the Toyota OEM tbh, and new LCA’s from Toyota are ~$275 each. If I can’t make these work I might just order new ones from Toyota.

 

Interesting about the lowers... I actually just put a set of those in mine a couple months ago. Guess I got lucky, they went in with no drama... getting the originals out, now that I was starting to worry about.

 

I replaced my LCA a few years back with aftermarket moogs and the ball joint boots took a shit. I replaced them with TTX lower ball joints. The old ball joints came out with just a hammer and a bit of heat so maybe the tolerances on the moogs were shit. But I installed the TTX ball joints the same way the old ones came out. I heated up the ring a bit and hammered the joint into place. I also used a die grinder to clean up the ID of the lower control arm.

 

The upper joint is under no real load....the lower joint supports the weight of the corner of the truck and takes most of the cornering loads...the upper is just an idler. The clip is just there as a safety measure...some press in joints don't use a clip at all.

Regardless, it's not right and they need to fix it.

 

I just installed these about a week back. Heated the ring applied anti-seize and they slowly slid in, no issues. C clamp style ball joint press. I am interested in the customer service/ how they're willing to fucking fix this aspect of your issue though

 

I was hoping TTX was going to be a bastion of decent suspension parts, as I'm constantly looking for who provides X parts that are of good quality at reasonable prices, and have always read praises of the TTX line, so this is disappointing if it doesn't resolve suitably.

 

I installed these TTX ball joints 3 or 4 years ago, in my driveway without a press. Puff your chest all you want about experience, but dropping them in the freezer overnight and heating the LCA worked for me. They went in easier than the OEM came out. YMMV.

 

Did you have the gap differential between the snap ring and the arm as indicated by the OP? The press thing MIGHT be attributable to tolerance mismatch (ie. arm hole on the smaller side of tolerance range being combined with the ball joint diameter being on the higher side of tolerance range).

 

i installed the ttx LBJ on my 2015 tacoma last weekend. the oem balljoints came out hard, and the ttx balljoints went in hard. i hope i don't have to do that again any time soon.

 

Looks like OP had that on the UCAs, so no, I didn’t have that issue since I replaced the entire UCAs with the SPCs. The LBJs had no extra gap where the snap ring meets the LCA.

 

So far Mevotech is still ghosting me. It looks like their customer service is non-existent. And for the record, I did try freezing them for one last try before going with Moog. Still no dice even with a shop press. Moog went in fine.

 

Big money, but has anyone tried the Camburg upper ball joints they offer for their upper arms?

Time for new ball joints and already have been running the Camburg ball joint upper arms, ran oem upper ball joints (pressed out of oem upper arms, then pressed into the Camburg arms).

 

It honestly sounds like they sent you the wrong Ball joints. I've been running the Mevotec TTX Ball joint for well over a few years. Never had a problem and didn't need a 20 ton press to put them in.

 

Figured I'd chime in with a little bit of revival here. Been running the ttx lbjs on my rig for about 3yrs now probably ~100k on them with a mix of highway and hard on the dirt, they've held up fine here. Grease them just about every time I grease the uca bushings, key I find is dont pump things right tight with grease unless specified.

As for the hard to press in it went in fine using the balljoint press but I slapped some anti-sieze on them cause the oem ones were a bastard to get out.

 

I came across this post while researching what to order for a 2011 Tacoma, I just wanted to add that I have tried Mevotech TTX parts on another car and also had the same experience of ball joints that were the wrong size and didn't fit. I actually called and talked to them, and their response was pretty much "we literally don't care, if you don't like them you should return them to the place you got them but there is no way for us to help you or even try to start making them properly". It's a good idea in concept, but they are cheap trash without sufficient quality control to make a part that is even physically possible to install.