Took me 10 years to figure out I was overtorquing lower ball joint nuts

I was changing out a control arm on a 2012 F-150 last Tuesday in my shop outside Phoenix. Been doing this since 2009, independent since 2016. I always cranked those castle nuts down until the cotter pin hole lined up, which usually meant a good bit past spec. Never thought twice about it. Then I got a 2020 Ram 1500 in for a front end noise. Customer said it was the second set of lower ball joints in 30,000 miles. I pulled the old ones out and the nylon insert was completely shot, melted basically. That moment I realized I'd been doing the same thing to every truck I worked on for a decade. Picked up a new torque wrench that afternoon and started setting mine to 90 lb-ft like the manual says. Has anyone else found out they were overtightening stuff their whole career?

2 comments

2 Comments

bell.taylor20d ago

Been doing this since 2009" - same here, swapped my torque wrench after ball joint failures on a Silverado.

jade27119d agoMost Upvoted

Oh MAN, @bell.taylor exactly what brand of torque wrench were you using before the swap? I went through THREE different ones before I finally gave up and bought a Snap-On, because my old Craftsman started clicking way too early on a set of control arm bolts. Did you notice your failures happening at the same torque setting every time, or was it random? I swear some of those cheaper wrenches are fine for lower torque stuff but they just CANNOT handle the higher foot-pounds on these bigger trucks.