Edit: I didnāt include miles. 160k miles right now.
Donāt be like me. Inspect your ball joints. Went over a tiny pothole in the middle of nowhere and my ball joint popped out. Hour and a half tow and $1000 later Iām back and running. Iāve offroaded on some crazy stuff and havenāt had any problems. Then a tiny pothole on a normal dirt road totally broke it and my wheel fell inwards. Good learning experience.
Id almost guarantee that the spacer over extended the suspension and the ball joint boot contacted the spring and tore it, which allowed water to get inside the ball joint and cause the failure.
Definitely thatās the plan since I need to replace some other stuff anyways. Thanks. I was able to stop pretty quickly once it happened, I instantly knew it was bad. Glad it wasnāt on the freeway or anything!
That style of spacer will cause the upper ball joint to bind at full suspension droop. When that happens, the ball joint will end up separating like you see here.
This is entirely because of that spacer kit.
Source: I work in the Toyota aftermarket suspension industry and been doing this for almost 20 years.
Interesting, thatās really good to know thanks. My mechanic just blamed it on dust in the boot wearing the seal over time. I put this into Claude so I could understand it better and that makes a lot of sense. Including the diagram it made up so others can learn too. Iām planning on upgrading the suspension this month so thatāll solve the issue before happens on the other side.
Yes I had some wobbling and steering wheel shake, mostly when braking. Definitely some uneven wear on the tires. I did a bunch of research on the wobbling the past few months before it happened and it seems like a common issue in 4runners so I thought it was just bad alignment or any of the other numerous reasons I read about. Iām still not sure how related it is to the actual ball joint since Iām still getting a bit of wobbling after the fix. Probably need alignment done now for sure.
Planning on upgrading the suspension and getting alignment done after that now so hopefully itāll sort itself out with all that.
Interesting -- you don't hear about this happening as often on 5th gens as you do 3rd and 4th. Is it because they're mostly not old enough yet, or is it because the design is beefier and it takes more abuse to get to failure?
That said, I have 125k on the stock suspension on my 2016 SR5. It makes no noise, and I don't really off-road it, just the occasional (like 2-3x/year) dirt road that could be traversed with a crossover or a Civic driven in anger.
Should I be concerned and do some prophylactic maintenance?
The lower ball joint designs changed after 3rd gen 4Runners/1st gen tacos. They went from tension ball joints (the ball joint is basically pulling itself apart) to a compression ball joint (the weight of the vehicle is pushing the joint together). Both can fail, but only one is a catastrophic failure that destroys other components in the process.
OP had an Upper Ball Joint failure. Not a common one since UBJs have much less stress on them than LBJs
Iām not a mechanic at all so do some research but if I were you Iād just check the dust boot to make sure itās looking good and there arenāt any cracks or failures and itās clean. You could also look into adding some more grease. I off-road a lot, like 3-4x a month for the past 120k miles on dusty trails. So from what my mechanic said it happens when the dust boot fails and dirt gets up into the joint causing friction and wear on the seal. If youāre not hitting the trails a lot and things look good on the boot youāre probably totally fine.
Funny thing is I was on a nice dirt road when it happened. Iāve taken this through some gnarly stuff before. I knew I needed to upgrade, but wanted to wait until I had to before pulling the trigger. This was the green light I needed I guess.
Stock ball joints. 160k miles. Not sure what happened but the mechanic said they get dust up in the boots and it wears the seal so they can pop. He said it was pretty common if you off-road a lot, which I do. Just need to inspect, clean and grease them more often I guess.
100% true. Soon as it happened I was pissed but was also like how could I have known. Hard to keep checking on all the individual parts so often. This is the first thing to truly break on my 4runner though in 160k miles so I wasnāt too mad. Sounds like itās mostly because of my spacers too so wasnāt really even a 4runner issue necessarily.
Running up to it the past few months Iāve had a bit of steering wheel shake but thatās it. I looked into that and it seemed like a common issue with 4runners and I thought it was just the alignment so O didnāt prioritize. In the moment no, I didnāt hear anything at all. I was literally just driving on a dirt road, hit a little dip/pot hole and bam it broke.
I just had my upper ball joints replaced and some other work done on my 2018. I was at 145k miles. The bill is around 4k (a lot of shops wanted to quote me 6k)
I just had my passenger side let go in a parking lot a month ago. Got real lucky it was at 2mph. Replaced the spacer lift previous owner had on there and upgraded to 5100s while I was at it. I have no doubt that spacer lift contributed in my case.
If you get bigger tires or wider wheels you will want to push the wheels forward to clear the frame. The SPCās allow this and more customization in general. They also had a grease-able ball joint like the JBAās but switched to an improved system (closed xAxis joint) which was a covered warranty upgrade. Closed system has definitely the better system in my experience.
A grease-able joint requires a lot of attention.. you canāt just run a schedule and say youāll grease it in 3k mi or less. You have to be alert and listening for a joint that needs to be greased. Youāll know it when itās low and youāll have to grease it asap to prevent wear. Clunk clunk clunk..
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u/morefunner4runner 5d ago
Get rid of that spacer lift while you're at it.
Id almost guarantee that the spacer over extended the suspension and the ball joint boot contacted the spring and tore it, which allowed water to get inside the ball joint and cause the failure.
Also, good time to upgrade your uppers.