When To Replace Upper and Lower Control Arms?

My 1998 TRD is a few hundred miles short of 80,000. Twice a year I take the truck on some very rough roads (no rock crawling though) in Utah and central Nevada. Other than that, I do little if any hauling with it. The truck is starting to rattle a bit and I'd like to maintain the original (new) ride. At 58,000 miles I had to replace the steering rack, both lower ball joints, both inner tie rod ends, both outer tie rod ends, and the sway bar links. Is it now time to replace the upper and lower control arm bushings? (I thought I buy the entire control arms rather than fiddle with replacing bushings.) At 60,000 miles I installed new factory shocks all around, so I don't really need to replace those yet. Or? Finally, what about the bushings on the leaf springs? Has anybody noticed any changes in ride after replacing them?

 

Well if anything just replace the ball joints, those are the parts that are going to to go bad. The arms and bushings should be in fairly good shape, if not, replace with energy suspension bushings. The arm itself shouldn't have to be replaced.

 

I think the best modification you can make to that taco is just drive it instead of letting it sit so much. 80k on a 98? It's not even broke in. (As far as I can tell) I'm on original racks on my taco at almost 180k, original outer tie rods, LBJs done at 170k. Wife's 4 runner is on original front suspension/steering except for shocks/coils at 210k. Nothing is wore out yet but it's fixing to get ball joints as a precaution.

You're getting into not driven enough problems more than anything.

 

All that replaced at 58K miles?. I should be ashamed.

Someone else determine that all of that needed to be replaced?. I reason I ask is because theses trucks usually go waay past that before needing anything other than maybe lower ball joints and shocks and the occasional alignment check every 6-8 years or so depending how rough you are with the truck. You said no rock crawling,,which can be severely abusive on susp components. So I take it as just road crawling a bit when you go wheel offroad?.

Only going offroad twice a year is nothing as far as sever wear,,So long as you are not purposely testing it's limits by holding the motor on the chip in 4L,,whiskey'd up and all.

210K on the original stuff,,scratch that,,211K on all original. Everything is still tight. I did grease the ungreasable OEM ball joints thru it's life, by using a grease gun needle syringe adapter every 3-6000 miles. So I can see you loosing ball joints and of course shocks,,but everything else,,at this point,,should be really tight for the most part.