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I have read and participated in many forum threads on OEM versus aftermarket parts, so no need to rehash it all here. Just some warnings.
On 9/24/14 I purchased aftermarket lower ball joints for my daughter's '97 CR-V from PartsGeek. They happen to be Mevotech, whose website states "better than OEM". LBJs are press in, so I had a local NAPA press out the old LBJs from he knuckles and press in the new ones. I installed it all and used my torque wrench to applyt the proper torque to the castle nuts (I always use the torque wrench on suspension components for sure). I figure these were installed sometime early October 2014, after shipping and finding a free weekend, etc.
Last night, which is about 15 months max from install date, the right front LBJ failed.
She was on a city main street, right at a strip mall, minutes from entering the Interstate, 75 MPH driving there. She stated it felt like something in the engine fell down, horrible grinding and almost a loss of steering (yeah, of course!). She immediately pulled into the lot, parked it, and had to wait in the dark alone for friends to come pick her up (different city than me).
Today I drove down and checked it out, and it is bad. Destroyed the cv-axle, severely gouged the inner well of the wheel. I have no idea yet if the lower control arm is shot, and most important if the tranny is shot due to the torque the cv took when the LBJ failed. As this is all wheel drive I could not tow it conventionally with my truck and tow bar, so had to pony up $85 to flat bed tow it 1 mile to a family member house where is now darkening their driveway until I can go fix it. I'm going to have her insurance assess it and see what I can claim.
Lesson learned - lower cost aftermarket, no matter what reviews may say or what their website touts, is dangerous. I am pulling the other LBJ out at the same time I fix this as no way I trust it. Will go to Honda to get the OEM part.
Beware all! I have some terrifying thoughts of this failure happening when she was on I-40, one of the most dangerous busy high speed roads around these parts.
Made in China. I've used Mevotech ball joints on my Rav4 long ago without issue, and I beat the snot out of it on unpaved mountain roads. Try finding made in Japan aftermarket parts. They exist. I was very pleased to find my local Autozone carrying made in Japan lower ball joints in their generic Duralast box. So far it's held up no issues. Autozone also rents the press to push in and out the joints for free.
I bought 2 new front lower ball joints off Amazon for my CRV a year ago....same thing happened to me. Luckily I was only going about 5 mph. Ball joint sheered off and ripped CV boot...but my trans was fine. $300 and about 2 hours later a local shop had me back on the road.
I plan on buying new Honda lower ball joints once I go to freshen them up again.
The manufacturer has stated I have to go through the seller to discuss warranty/refund issues. The seller has not responded to my mail. When I get it apart I will be raising all kinds of hell as it sure looks so far like a defect in quality.
I ordered two OEM ball joints to replace the broken one and the other one that I have zero confidence in. I'll have to see if the lower control arm is bent out of spec when I do all the work. Those things run almost $200 without the bushing, washer and nut securing it to the chassis. We'll see.
1. The car was broken down 50+ miles form my home, where my tools and everything I would need to fix it. 4 days of back and forth, all kinds of BS issues to coordinate it all. And Bonus to #1 - the OEM LBJs did NOT COME WITH THE FREAKING CASTLE NUTS (or cotter pins). The damaged LBJ had eradicated the castle nut. Guess who sells castle nuts? NOBODY. So I took the pressed out good (meaning crap CHinese part I had in it, which I replaced with OEM) LBJ and tried to match up any nut I could find. I knew it was metric, but NOTHING would fit. Turns out the end threads were bunged up due to the press to press them out. M12 1.25 (fine thread) in case anyone wants to know. That took me about 4 hours of running around to get right.
2. It would have been about $600 to flat bed tow it to my home, so that did not happen. Instead it sat in an in-laws driveway
3. The LBJ busted stud was impossible to remove with the LCA attached. I lubed, banged, cussed, and tried every tool I could rent from AutoZone. My Pitman was too large to use, so I tried 3-jaw, etc. No dice.
4. To remove the LCA, so I could take the LCA to a shop to press out the welded in busted LBJ stud, I had to remove the sway bar link. Whose nuts were rusted solid. The design of these is stupendously stupid: a hex key to hold the stud while you try to break loose the 14mm nut. Yeah, right. Of course that hex shaft strips instantly.
5. So, 4.5" angle grinder to cut the #@&$^*! sway bar link in half to remove the LCA.
6. No shops open to press out the stud, so I took it all home, 50 miles away, to get done the next morning. Only shop I could find shuts their doors after I dropped it off and came back (when we agreed). Had to wait until the next morning to pick up the LCA, now LBJ stud free.
7. The half of the sway bar link still attached to the sway bar is rusted up, so again have to angle grind cut that off, which is tricky as you do not want to cut the sway bar, CV axle, or the LCA. Took a bit but got that.
8. The damage caused the wheel to warp, so had to swap out the spare tire wheel just so it would balance right.
And on a completely different note the rear diff was leaking. Nice big puddle under the car. Looks like it is leaking where the propeller shaft joins the diff assembly. Nice. As I had no idea how long it had been doing that (no way in hell my 19 year old daughter was paying any attention to something like that), I opted to drain and refill the rear diff. OEM fluid - $20 as it takes just over 1 quart. Turns out only about 200ml (maybe) was missing, so apparently not a bad leak.
And I guess the passenger side caliper was sticking, as the driver side brake pads were almost to metal (passenger side still had some meat). Glad I caught that, as last time she came home it was metal on metal and I had to replace the rotors. New ceramic pads on the front as well.
But it is up and running. I beat that beyatch. Had me some beer tonight. Word.
Try a blow torch on bonded parts, and invest in an impact driver. My Milwaukee 1/2" M18 impact driver has conquered every bolt its encountered. Rusted 36mm hub nuts? No problem. I ran into the same problem separating my ball joint. The ball ripped out and the rest was seized into the hub. A few minutes of heat on the part it goes through and a sledge hammer ftw
Had an impact driver, as well as impact sockets. But you can't get the driver into the spaces needed to attack those sway bar link nuts - at least not the engine facing nut. And, with the sway bar links, the issue is the stud turns with the nut, so you must put in a hex key to hold the stud and a wrench to turn the nut. Maybe the impact driver, via the impact fun, would have managed to break the nut enough it would then turn fine.
That was half the fun - being at someone else's house 50+ miles away from my garage. I had a blow torch at home, they did not. I had a nice drill bit set I could have, if nothing else, used to drill the stud out. Not there. By yesterday (when I finally got it fixed up) I had my truck loaded with every tool I could imagine needing. Took me an hour to put it all back when I got home lol.
Not often you see them break like that! Im not sure what part you were having issues with removing? the base of the ball joint (in the knuckle) or the stub that was left in the lower arm. If it was the stub left in that lower arm, your best way of getting it out would be securing the lower arm (with a jack stand, or if you dont have enough room, a brick or couple pieces of wood) and grabbing the biggest (ball pein) hammer you can swing and hitting it from the top. swing like a man and it should pop out in one shot. swing like a girl and youll just deform the top of the stub and have a hell of a time trying to get it out of the arm. youd end up having to get a grinder and cutting it off flush at the top, then using a punch, hit it out. to get the base out of the knuckle, you have to remove whats left of the axle from the knuckle, then swing upwords with a hammer on it and it should pop out as well, obviouslly after removing any snap ring thats there, if there is one. installation should be done using a ball joint installation tool. I usually give the ball joint a few small taps in place with a hammer, then use the ball joint tool. If you dont have one, and cant get one, stick a piece of pipe on top that fits around the edge of the ball joint and give it a few good smacks with the hammer and it will go into place. Welcome to road side installation! Im a honda technician and these are the following parts ive changed on the side of the road/parking lots/high speed free ways
ball joints
wheel bearings
axle (2000 SiR, side of a 110km freeway, had no hood on at the time so i watched it explode, super cool)
transmission
drowning ecu (had a leak above the ecu, heavy rainfall, and a non leaking floor.
im sure lots of other things.
The original parts lasted 200,000-300,000 Km, why would you (not you specifically, but people in general) save 20$ and put in an aftermarket part? Doesnt make much sense to me, but sometimes youre in that position and dont have a choice.
Not often you see them break like that! Im not sure what part you were having issues with removing? the base of the ball joint (in the knuckle) or the stub that was left in the lower arm. If it was the stub left in that lower arm, your best way of getting it out would be securing the lower arm (with a jack stand, or if you dont have enough room, a brick or couple pieces of wood) and grabbing the biggest (ball pein) hammer you can swing and hitting it from the top. swing like a man and it should pop out in one shot. swing like a girl and youll just deform the top of the stub and have a hell of a time trying to get it out of the arm. youd end up having to get a grinder and cutting it off flush at the top, then using a punch, hit it out. to get the base out of the knuckle, you have to remove whats left of the axle from the knuckle, then swing upwords with a hammer on it and it should pop out as well, obviouslly after removing any snap ring thats there, if there is one. installation should be done using a ball joint installation tool. I usually give the ball joint a few small taps in place with a hammer, then use the ball joint tool. If you dont have one, and cant get one, stick a piece of pipe on top that fits around the edge of the ball joint and give it a few good smacks with the hammer and it will go into place. Welcome to road side installation! Im a honda technician and these are the following parts ive changed on the side of the road/parking lots/high speed free ways
ball joints
wheel bearings
axle (2000 SiR, side of a 110km freeway, had no hood on at the time so i watched it explode, super cool)
transmission
drowning ecu (had a leak above the ecu, heavy rainfall, and a non leaking floor.
im sure lots of other things.
The original parts lasted 200,000-300,000 Km, why would you (not you specifically, but people in general) save 20$ and put in an aftermarket part? Doesnt make much sense to me, but sometimes youre in that position and dont have a choice.
The busted LBJ stud was stuck in the LCA. I didn't think you could hit it from the top, trying to drive the stud down through the LCA, as the stud portion of the LBJ is wider than the hole in the LCA, yeah? The threaded part slides down, but seemed to me the top is wider. Maybe not, but looked that way. And at some point I was worried my swings were going to start to deform the LCA a bit. I was not using the heaviest hammer in my tool box, just a heavy ball peen (not a baby sledge), but I figured I would wind up fouling the LCA and get to drop another $200 on that.
With this car, I am trying to keep it alive a little longer until we can get her into something else. I have already put more money into it than I am comfortable with. Once we can swing another one, this thing goes to the junk yard. I would be afraid some other father would get it for his kid and wind up in the same constant break down scenario. Best to scrap it out.
I feel your pain...I will say that the ball join doesn't look oem. I also find it odd that your oem balljoint didn't come with a castle nut and pin because ordering the ball joint, from what i see from hondapartsunlimited, it provides you with the nut and pin.
The busted LBJ stud was stuck in the LCA. I didn't think you could hit it from the top, trying to drive the stud down through the LCA, as the stud portion of the LBJ is wider than the hole in the LCA, yeah? The threaded part slides down, but seemed to me the top is wider. Maybe not, but looked that way. And at some point I was worried my swings were going to start to deform the LCA a bit. I was not using the heaviest hammer in my tool box, just a heavy ball peen (not a baby sledge), but I figured I would wind up fouling the LCA and get to drop another $200 on that.
With this car, I am trying to keep it alive a little longer until we can get her into something else. I have already put more money into it than I am comfortable with. Once we can swing another one, this thing goes to the junk yard. I would be afraid some other father would get it for his kid and wind up in the same constant break down scenario. Best to scrap it out.
Sorry i must have been drunk. it does in fact go upwords. would have to find a way to secure the arm. a large peen is what i use 90% of the time. Sometimes i use an extra large peen. If that doesnt get it out, nothing will. a baby sledge doesnt fit anywhere. its very unlikely that youd damage the lower arm. the other option is a princess auto/harbor freight ball joint removal tool. similar to this
I feel your pain...I will say that the ball join doesn't look oem. I also find it odd that your oem balljoint didn't come with a castle nut and pin because ordering the ball joint, from what i see from hondapartsunlimited, it provides you with the nut and pin.
Yeah, the crap one was not OEM - it was Mevotech. I did not take a pic of the OEM installed. I was pretty surprised too about the nut and pin, but then again the box had a rip in it, so maybe both fell out?? Seems unlikely as usually those are in the sealed bag with the LBJ, but who knows. The cotter in was not big deal as I got a box of assorted sizes from AutoZone. But that damn nut drove me nutty.
Sorry i must have been drunk. it does in fact go upwords. would have to find a way to secure the arm. a large peen is what i use 90% of the time. Sometimes i use an extra large peen. If that doesnt get it out, nothing will. a baby sledge doesnt fit anywhere. its very unlikely that youd damage the lower arm. the other option is a princess auto/harbor freight ball joint removal tool. similar to this
I have a nice pitman like your image, but it is too big to work - the jaws just slipped right off. I need to get a smaller one. I tell ya, I beat the ever loving hell out of it. I tend to break bolts and such with my arms, and I can put a beat down on something with a hammer. It just had no ability to really smack out, or it was kind of welded a bit due to the kind of damage (the wheel running around that nut when it broke. It sheared half the original nut off, and really beat the crap out of the inner wheel). Oh well, done now. Now for her next problem, which I am sure is only weeks or months away lol.
01-27-2016, 06:27 PM
Dangers of crap aftermarket parts
