Ball Joints - Which Brand is the best for the money???

Wow what a difference in prices.
Autozone sells Duralast (LifeTime Warranty)
Advance Auto sells TRW (Lifetime Warranty)
Checker Sells McCoy Norris (Lifetime Warranty)
All of them are pretty comparable in prices
But when I check for MOOG and CTR the prices are about double.
WHY????
Am I paying for the name is there some genuine differences that justify the price difference? Will I ever notice the difference?? One of the clerks at Advance Auto said their TRW balls are solid metal and the other brand that they sell are hollow. Of the Duralast, TRW and McCoy, any preferences or experiences that will help me choose?

MY APOLOGIES, I DIDN'T SEE THE RESPONSES TO MY PREVIOUS POST ON DURALAST BALL JOINTS. But if you have additional information, I would sure enjoy reading them.

Thank you


Thanks

How long do you want them to last ? You get what you pay for. I have had to replace some of the cheeper ball joints even if they did come with a lifetime guarentee. I have never replaced a MOOG or TRW after putting them in.

How long do you want them to last ? You get what you pay for. I have had to replace some of the cheeper ball joints even if they did come with a lifetime guarentee. I have never replaced a MOOG or TRW after putting them in.

Plus MOOG also covers the labor of having them replaced if they're done at a shop. That says a lot for the quality. I'll never use anything other than MOOG after a cheaper set falling apart in 5000 miles.

I have had good luck with Moog except for large rear drive chevy's. I would press the old joint out and I could put the Moog in by hand. I got tired of calling and went to the parts store and none of them fit. I bought a replacement from Napa. Moog's factory rep stopped in the shop but never corredcted the problem. I'm talking 1979 Impala's.
I've had good luck with Trw but have never used the other brands.

I read somewhere about TRW being the same as Moog. The part numbers were the same or something.

The Moog is the best,stay away from cheap ones.Here is one way to tell,if it is a blue boot,cheap and a black boot,the best one such as a Moog.Her is AutoZone's and Advanced's lifetime warranty: One time use only and you are done.

MY APOLOGIES, I DIDN'T SEE THE RESPONSES TO MY PREVIOUS POST ON DURALAST BALL JOINTS. But if you have additional information, I would sure enjoy reading them.

i'm closing your original thread since there is no point in having 2 threads going about the same topic.

i'll be needing to replace mine soon too, probably the uppers.

The job is done. HOORAY, thanks to this site for some great technical "how To" with pictures. I ended up buying the ball joints at Advance Auto. They were the TRW's and from what somebody said, they are made by MOOG. Don't know if that is true or not. Job wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Replacing both upper and lower, both sides and the idler arm took me 4.5 hours.

Good to hear. Here (http://forums.s-series.org/viewtopic.php?p=459192&highlight=#459192) is where I heard about the TRW parts.

Go for the Moog they have a hight quality bushing and a good price for a high performance part

Agreed, Moog is top of the line. Moog and TRW are both owned by Federal-Mogul Corporation, Southfield, Michigan. Not the same parts, but same parent company.

autozone suspension parts are junk. moog is good. xrf is the best if you can find them. as far as using moog numbers, moog has been so widely use that it has beome a standardized part numbering system for many companies. trw are not the same. moog is owned by federated auto parts. trw are ok. the simple fact is no matter which brand you use, you can expect to change s series ball joints relatively frequently. i make alot of money in the garage i work at changing them. moog does stand behind their product. they are easy to find. last as long as youre gonna find. the only reasson id suggest xrf is that the guy who started taht company was basicly the head of moog parts. he thought he could build the smae or better quality parts at a better price. so in a sense, yer gettin the same quality or better at a lower price. and to be honest, i usually changed out moog ball joints on the s-series about every 20-30k miles. ive seen 30-40k out of the xrf.

Agreed, Moog is top of the line. Moog and TRW are both owned by Federal-Mogul Corporation, Southfield, Michigan. Not the same parts, but same parent company.
not the same
http://www.federal-mogul.com/en/BrandSelector

This article published August 25, 1992 tells of the aquisition:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4D6173AF936A1575BC0A9649582 60

This article shows the Federal-Mogul corporate time line:
http://www.answers.com/topic/federal-mogul-corp?cat=biz-fin

Not the same parts, but same parent company, for a little over 15 years.

Using oversize tires,lift kits and mud running is the cause of a lot of 4WD S-10 ball joint problems. My son used to get towed home after hitting a stump or rock buried in the mud running trails along power lines. The upper ball joint would pull out of the socket. I think they were designed this way as if it didn't come apart it would require more expensive parts. He worked and bought his own parts and helped doing repairs.
He bought a used GMC 3/4 ton with a bad spindle caused by a bad bearing.
I replaced spindle,rotors,calipers,ball joints,anti lock parts. I used TRW ball joints. A wheel alignment was done. He used it for a termite business and got over 100,000 on these ball joints.

you are right. i am wrong. when i went to a corperate traing session in southfield at the hq, i asked the rep about trw. he didnt speak highly of them. strange. i guess you learn somthing new every day. my mistake.

I not Only back Moog for its quality but if you have noticed moog comes with a lifetime warrenty that XRF will not offer

I never got a bad Moog ball joint that fit. I had a 1979 chevy impala which I used a ball joint press and removed the joints. I got two moog ball joints and I could push them in with my fingers. I went back to the parts store and checked the part number got two more and one fit. He called another store 13miles away and he used a dial indicator one of his four would work. I had to drive to the store and pickup. While I got the job done I wasted more time getting parts.
This was around 1985 I purchased a garage business a few years later. I used Moog parts a Chevy Impala came in which needed ball joints the mechanic removed the old joints and the same problem occured. I called the parts store and they sent two more they also didn't fit. I called Napa and they delivered two that fit. Moog used to have a magazine with a place for tips. I wrote about this and said use Napa ball joints for the solution. They sent out a factory man. I tried a couple on another impala a few months later same problem. If I have to press in a ball joint I use TRW never had a problem.

Moog also makes ball joints for Carqest and Napa.My father and I use Carquest ball joints which are made by Moog and says on the box.We put in only Moog becuase they stand behind their parts and their lifetime warranty is the best.My brother had a problem sending a ball joint back to Advanced and would not cover under warranty because the offst of his tires

Carquest blue box is Moog, they also have a cheapie line and that comes in a red box.

Go with MOOG, nothing else.

Hey, I have a technical question about ball joints on a Baja car that I am working on. The car is being constructed from scratch, except for the engine, gearbox and CVT.
Our team is responsible for designing the geometry of the front suspension links on the Baja car. We are running into some problems with our suspension geometry.

We are using Frap ball joints, part number 2443, to connect the front upper and lower A-arms of the suspension system to the knuckle of the Baja car as seen in the picture
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7226/13613905044_11956b54e5_m.jpg
We would like to have a full vertical wheel travel of about 10 inches. We are in the process of checking the suspension geometry and the suspension links for interference, and we noticed that in order to accommodate the vertical travel of 10", the lower ball joint on the knuckle exceeds its angular range, as stated in the Frap catalogue of 30 degrees, when the tire is at its fully lowered position. I was wondering if there is any other ball joints that have a larger angular range, that would be able to accommodate the full range of vertical wheel travel of 10 inches. We found that we would need a ball joint that can accommodate a maximum angular displacement of 44.5 degrees
https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7215/13613563393_2c6f8844fe_m.jpg
Are you aware of any such ball joints? Do you know anyone who might have experience with this issue in the past who may be able to help me?

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

You might contact Federal Mogul Corporation in Southfield, Michigan, (USA) They are the parent company of Moog and TRW. Federal Mogul is a tier 1 supplier to the automotive manufacturers. http://www.federalmogul.com/en-US/Contact/Pages/home.aspx In the upper right corner of the web page you can select UK if that would help.

After searching for a bit I found two ball joints that might be useful to me, they are the MOOG DS804, and the MOOG-ES3017R. They are bended male tie rods, and they have the right direction of angle between their faces. I need them to be angled so that the threaded parts of the ball joint are closer together, like this one:
http://74.208.69.61/Images/moog/MO_ES352R_Fro.jpg
The minimum angle that the bend is must be 15 degrees for the ball joint to work for me. Does anyone know of a ball joint that would meet this criteria? Also I have been looking for either a CAD model of these ball joints, or a spec sheet to tell me the exact angular offset that they have, but I haven't been able to find one. Does anyone know where I can find a CAD model of these parts, or find a spec sheet that will show me what angle the offset is?

Thanks

Although it's a spherical joint, a tie rod is typically not designed to carry the weight of a vehicle. While a good tie rod can survive the several hundred pounds of radial load placed upon it while controlling radial movement, it would likely fail instantly if subjected to the several thousand pounds of axial load expected for ball joints.