Extreme camber after BMB brake install
- Thread starter av8r_bray
- Start date
This all makes sense, as soon as I am back at the Jeep tomorrow I will get pictures of the old ball joints and how the new ones are installed. And start checking angles
The ball joints āpoppedā in further with each crank of the press, until it firmly bottomed out and the press noticeably got very tough to turn. Any further and it felt like I was going to break the press. I was also aware of the shoulders being flush with the C. I really donāt think this is the problem but I will triple check.
Negative, no shims on anything.
Yes. Tires are toast. The brakes and steering preparation for 35s. Plus a slew of other parts. Trying to get this work done and get it aligned before the new tires.
Something is definitely askew but when you look at this pic you can see that the inner C and the knuckle appear to be correctly oriented. Almost like the ball joints are being dumb once weight is being applied to them.
Just my .02 but from the OPs description of how it felt when they landed home and the (un)likelihood of getting a pair of bad parts that are wrong in the same way either from Spicer or from BMB...this seems like the most likely scenario here.
That was news to me, and good to know.
I also don't know the history of the jeep (unless it was posted and I missed it) but I wouldn't bet money that I could tell a 10 year old ball joint from the original if it was Spicer, so I don't know that it can be ruled out that the axle didn't land a jump and bend the inners or the housing and then get Spicer offset joints installed as the fix.
If he has had the kit for quite awhile, it is possible we missed a pair that are out of spec. If he has had it less than a year, that likelihood goes way down. The possibility also exists that someone checked them and didn't get it right. As I said, we are not perfect but since we found an out of spec part more than 2 years ago, we do a 100% inspection.
We all assume that Spicer is the OEM balljoint. I've removed 100's and I still don't know how to very exactly determine that they are Spicer other than communal accepted knowledge.
At this point, we just need to get the OEM knuckles back on for a test to see if we are the problem or not.
That looks as in appears to be exactly how it should look at that point in the installation. With as much camber shift as we are seeing, I would expect it to show up here and I just don't see it. Not even remotely saying it isn't there, it just doesn't look like it.
We need a clear picture of the shoulder on the lower where it is next to the notch they machine. Or the inner part.
Why wouldn't Dana use Dana-Spicer ball joints for their axles? I dunno why they'd use a different brand for an integral part of a Dana-Spicer axle since Dana-Spicer makes ball joints, u-joints, etc.. It's not like a seal that Dana-Spicer doesn't make.
Because it is up to the customer (in this case Jeep) what parts are installed in those housings. If it were not there would not have been all the ball joint issues with the Dodge pickups after they had Spicer stop using the same ball joints that the Fords used.
I'm not disputing that they are. I said I've removed more than a few that I know were OEM and there is no mark on them to indicate what brand they actually are.
What I do know, I wish I could afford to buy and use the same ones they put in at the factory because they have lasted longer for us than anything else. I also don't fully believe that any I would buy over the counter at the dealer are quite the same as what was put in at the factory.
I suspect it's a multi-tiered quality inspection criteria. Top tier goes in the housings before they ship to Jeep because Jeep will backcharge them for warranty claims. Lower tier goes to parts sales because they won't come back to be refunded in any significant numbers. Then when the vehicles using the part are out of production, the upper tier probably goes away and you only get one that would have met the upper tier by sheer luck but you'll never find one on purpose because there's no way to identify whether it would have made the upper tier or not.
Your gonna call me out in the presence of the brake guru
...I usually try to change the rotors as well but won't say that's the case 100% of the time. I can remember when the new rotor quality was so shitty I used to tell people to turn new rotors. This was years ago and was probably a value line of rotor but still.
Your gonna call me out in the presence of the brake guru
no judgement, I've been guilty of the same.
Leveled and straight 2x4 next to tire.
Axle tube dead level with disc seated.
Various pictures of each ball joints
Pictures of old ball joints
Axle tube dead level with disc seated.
Various pictures of each ball joints
Pictures of old ball joints
Also the brake kit was ordered march of this year. Standing by to take things apart further, but with how far out that tire is, I feel like something would blatantly stand out here.
I've got a pair of knuckles sitting here ready to go out. All I need you to do is swap on one old knuckle to see if it changes the face angle where the unit bearing sits so I know we are the problem and not you. Be aware that the steering arm needs to be pointed in exactly the same spot. The reason it changes is due to caster. As you rotate the knuckle, the camber changes so it needs to be exactly straight ahead if possible.
March of this year should be well past when we started doing 100% inspections, if those got out of here without being inspected, that is really stupid on our part.
