ball joints
 

i need to replace my upper and lower ball joints on my 05 silverado z71, i have been reading that its recommended to replace the entire control arm instead of joint itself? im a newbie to this..any advice would be great (pros and cons) or reason why

Upper control will be easy, bottom control arm sucks. Are you gonna do it yourself?

was planning on it, but haven't got that far yet, whats the deal with replacing whole arm vs just ball joint....advice?

lower ball joints are probably welded in. which means grinding the weld without messing up the whole arm. way easier to buy whole control arm. use a good wax crayon or paint pen to mark all your alignment bolts and such. this will help to get everything back together close to where it was. alignment will be required.

is it a 4x4 with torsion bars? or do you have a RWD with coil springs?

4x4 with torsions

hey then you wont need coil spring compressors. I'd loosen your torsion bar keys to reduce any pressure up there(use a torsion key compressor tool). If you replace your control arms, look into getting new bump stoppers before the operation, some times the old ones don't come off willingly and are trashed. Stock ones are pretty cheap, if you expect to be hauling some heavy stuff, or snow plowing I'd look into getting the ones made for snow plowing. measure the length of how deep your torsion key bolts are, before you start any adjustments there, so you can put them back where they were at.

If it were me, I'd be replacing the whole arm. Much less of a hassle. Check out rockauto.com. I bout arms there for the same price as ball joints at o Reilly's

im soon to be in the same situation, my lower control arm's bolt holes for the shocks are really bored out in a oval shape, makes an annopying chattering sound. I was thinking of welding the holes shut then drilling it out, but i think them control arms have seen enough life, being 26 years old.

so should i look into replacing both upper and lower arms? or just the lower and replace upper ball joint? i live in san diego so i wont have to worry about snow plowing