Parts quality questions.

I am looking at Rockauto for some suspension parts for my Ranger. The ball joints are listed as "service grade and profesional grade". What is the difference? Other than price.

longetivity, service grade is ok , prof grade has longer life my experiences has shown this this is only my opinions hth jeff

Given how crappy ball joints on a Ranger are to start with, I'd spring for the professional grade if at all possible.

I say this as the loving owner of a '99 Ranger.

unless it's a job you want to do over get the pro grade. (Says the man who learned after doing 5 Malibu hub bearings in 11 months.)

billy3esq wrote: Given how crappy ball joints on a Ranger are to start with, I'd spring for the professional grade if at all possible. I say this as the loving owner of a '99 Ranger.

I have 200k on the factory ball joints. No noises, no slop, seem to be working fine. What were the symptoms for yours wearing out?

Noises and slop (mostly noises) starting at about 50k. It was most most common pulling in and out of driveways or other bumps, but it would even make noises driving down the street with things like expansion joints, etc. I finally caved and replaced them at 60k.

Every Ford truck or van anyone in my family has ever had (dozens of them by now) has had a relatively high maintenance front end.

I can't answer your question, but a guy at an Advance Autoparts store told me that many of their higher priced parts are exactly the same part as the lower priced part, but have a longer warranty period. So in those cases, you aren't paying for a better part, just a better warranty. I'm not saying at all that this applies universally, and I'm not saying it applies anywhere except Advance, but it probably pays in many cases to actually look at the parts before buying, unless you don't mind paying more for a longer warranty period.

It's funny. I worked as a tech in a chassis shop back in the early 80's. As such, I did a lot of front end work. Back then, GM vehicles by far had the worst front ends as far as durability went. Fortunately, they were pretty easy to work on also. Fords weren't that bad, but some models were a pain to align. Mopars were pretty much the worst to align, but durability was somewhere between GM and Ford. No matter what the brand, you'd think they would have perfected the ball joint by now.