Being the relatively new owner of my 4.8is, this truck came with a few issues that I have been periodically addressing (one being the smokey tail pipes of shame aka valve seals), but today I utilized the good weather to tackle a front-end refresh of all the arms and ball joints. While there are plenty of write ups abound, this thread is not one. All I can say is that if the parts on your truck are original, take whatever time you think this will take and double it. I was expecting four hours of lolligagging but turned into six, due to fussy ball joints and a bit of corrosion on a few of the nuts. Another tip is to hit up the dealership and buy extra replacement nuts for every arm/rod you are replacing - you can always return what you didn't use later on.
Anyhow, this thread is more so to bring to your attention the absolutely terrible design of the bushings on the torque control arms and what I installed to never have to think about them again. From a friend of mine on the East Coast who is an SCCA instructor, he suggested I forego the OEM replacements and polyurethane upgrades and go with all metal spherical bushings from Moosehead Engineering. What's good is that the business owner will press them into new Lemfoerder arms and in the event of failure, are completely serviceable. Of course, you can buy just the bushings and press them into your own arms yourself.
After installing this afternoon I took the truck for a drive and the handling has come back to life sooo good. There are no more symptoms of:
shaky steering feedback during hard braking
clunking over speed bumps at low speed
instability/lane wandering at high speed
intermittent shimmy at 65-70 mph
severe body roll/front end dip
premature tire wear*
Additional gains:
heightened steering response
much more road feedback via the steering wheel
less low speed turning effort
far better cornering
peace of mind knowing these bushings will stay together
If you're planning your front end refresh, I highly recommend you consider these for your replacement.
https://mooseheadengineering.com/#!/...=0&sort=normal
