front end falling apart..

[bitchin85]

the hole front suspension under my truck has always felt like it was going to fall off every time i hit a bump. i know for a fact i need shocks. what else could i do to rebuild/tighten up the front suspension on a 2wd 1/2 ton. im going to put either lift springs or 1 ton springs or something in the front when i do it so it will sit level with the beefier back springs. so what do i need? ball joints?, tie rod ends? bushings? i dont know much about suspension but this is driving me crazy. also my steering is actually pretty tight compared to other squares ive driven and have no complaints there. could someone give me some links/pics/tips of what i need to do to this thing or what they did? thanks guys

[OleBlue79]

My 79 3/4 ton felt kind of like that when I bought it last year. It felt like the wheels might just run off at any minute. I had to replace the upper and lower ball joints and inner and outer tie rod ends. I also replaced the pitman arm and idler arm. It drives much better now. All total it ran around a Grand between two shops doing the work. I learned one thing though. If you talk to a front end shop ask them for a price and then ask for a price if you supply the parts. I learned this dealing with the second shop. If I had done this with the first shop I probably could have saved an extra $250.00 or so.
You may need to have the upper and lower control arm bushings checked also. It;s a lot of bucks to spend but you are planning on keeping your truck. it's money well spent. The first thing I would check would be the ball joints and the idler and pitman arms.

[bitchin85]

ole blue, thanks alot. ill be doing all the work myself, or with friends. and i have access to an alignment rack for free when im all done with it.

[OleBlue79]

The parts are realatively cheap. The labor is what is expense. It wont cost an arm and a leg if you do it yourself. Just spend your money wisely and buy Moog parts. And be careful when removing the coils springs.

[RandyP]

Yes to the MOOG brand suggestion. And be sure to check for the MOOG name on the parts when you remove them from the box. We had not one, but two balljoints come from O'Reillys that were in MOOG boxes, but were actually cheap house brand. I guess someone bought both and then put the cheap balljoint in the MOOG box and returned it.

I put the heavy duty front springs on my truck, bought them at O'Reillys as well, made the truck sit more level compared to the back. Granted it looks like a 4x4 and it is just a 2 wheel drive, but it sits level.

http://www.73-87.com/7387garage/chas...n/frontend.htm in case you wanted some light reading.

[OleBlue79]

Yeah, I have to keep my eye on the guy's at the OReilly's where I shop. Years ago they were all Hi/Lo Auto Parts down here and then OReillys bought them out. Hi/Lo was good with quaility parts. Seems like OReillys is slowly starting to suck somewaht lately. I bought a Felpro theromostat gasket yesterday while trying to locate an overheating problem. About 5 hours after I installed it I had pull the thermostat and the gasket just shredded. I never seen a FelPro gasket do that. It almost seemed like a counterfit gasket.