I had a Lower Ball Joint snap in half on my new 94 LS400. I knew the outer tie rods were bad but didn't even think of the LBJ b/c when I bought it (4 months ago) all the suspension, UCA, LCA, shocks, etc. looked newer, except the rods. No shakes, no clunks. Only symptom I had lately was the steering wheel started not to come back to center, on it's own, after a turn. I could turn it back no problem. Sometimes pulled to the left, nothing major, just jerk the wheel real quick and then it went straight as an arrow. On my way to get the rods pulling in parking lot, about 2 MPH, it just dropped. Drove it straight into parking spot and said "oh well, at least I'm at the parts store." Lol. Stopped laughing when I saw it was the LBJ and not the tie rod. Lucky it didn't happen when I was going 80. Nobody has the LBJ in stock so I need to order and wait. That doesn't matter too much b/c we're getting 8" of snow today. Something major always happens to my car in the winter. Might as well do both LBJs and all tie rods now.
I jacked it up, took the tire off to look, and all I saw was the LBJ bad. Set the knuckle back on top of the LBJ and let the car down. It lowered to where the tire almost hits the fender.
My question is, would that be normal to sit low from the broken LBJ or did it maybe snap something else when it broke? I couldn't see b/c it was dark.

 

Where did the ball joint break?

Something else had to break. Maybe the strut bracket on the lower control arm? If the ball joint stud snapped allowing the knuckle of come off the lower control arm you could have that issue.


Everything is a guess until you get under and see what broke. It's like you want us to tell you what broke when you can just go look at it and go from there.

 

No mention of mileage but i would wager it was a 23 year old balljoint in acar in connecticut. Should have replaced it when you checked it last year, looking new doesn't mean anything.

Order a pair, install, realign, and you'll be fine.

 

The lower ball joints on the Gen 1 are the worse design ever. And yeah other makes did the same setup as well, that is one place not to monkey see monkey do.
The pictures I've seen on the 98 is how they should be. The Gen 1 all the weight on that wheel is pulling the ball out of the socket, on the newer ones its pushing the ball into the socket. That is the only thing on these cars that make me nervous. And yeah if it breaks the spring and strut do nothing as the spindle assembly just breaks away from the lower control arm, and is free to do what it wants to. And yeah going down the freeway at speed would not be a good thing. You better get a lottery ticket as you are a winner.

 

Where did the ball joint break?
The ball joint is still attached to the control arm. It came out of the socket which bolts to the knuckle. I've never seen this happen in all my years working on cars. Has to be bad workmanship during manufacturing b/c it is a newer part.

Something else had to break. Maybe the strut bracket on the lower control arm? If the ball joint stud snapped allowing the knuckle of come off the lower control arm you could have that issue.
Thanks, this answers my question of the car sitting low (knuckle not attached to the LCA) it just seemed too low.
My mind was still spinning when I asked, I had a brain freeze.


Everything is a guess until you get under and see what broke. It's like you want us to tell you what broke when you can just go look at it and go from there.
I did "look at it". Like I said, all I saw was the bad LBJ but it was dark. I was just looking for opinions on what might have broke to make the car sit low which you answered above. Thanks again.


PureDrifter: The car has 192k on it. When I checked it before I bought it everything was newer, absolutely no play in anything, (including this ball joint) except the tie rods. Previous owner took care of it. The suspension was one of the main reasons I bought it. Didn't want to go through the same thing as my old 93.

dicer: Yes, I agree, the LBJ is a very bad design. Everything else is over engineered, why not that?
Oh, I did buy lottery last night. I lost. All my luck was sitting in the drivers seat I guess.

Thanks guys.

 

Imagine that it pulled out of the socket hmmm. But I guess I had mentioned that above and I remember talking about it a long time ago on here. That is such a dangerous design I can't see how anyone with a thought process would have done it, even years ago on American cars. I forget which way the ball is installed during manufacturing I think some are swaged at the top where they would pull out. The contact area for that ball is so small since the opening has to be large enough for the shank and the movement of the shank. You really would think they would have wanted the larger safer bearing contact area of the socket, the ball never contacts that as the weight pulls it out. Just imagine the extra G loading on that when you hit a nice bump in the road. If it was designed correctly the weight pushes it in and also loads the shank in compression as well. They did it right on the newer cars. I'm just wondering if someone gets killed over a broken ball joint who is responsible? I think that should be a recall item, at least redesign it and offer the replacement parts for free.

 

deanshark, if the ball popped out of the joint and the part seems 'newer' it is most likely aftermarket. I see this all the time. Most aftermarket parts either don't fit or fail prematurely. Go with OEM suspension parts if you can, it's worth it to avoid issues like this. I'm glad you didn't lose control or tear up your fender and tire from this.

 

The 2-GS had some catastrophic ball joint failures. The owners there were changing them at the 100K range. I followed same when ours and also did the tie rods at 103K. When removed the ball joints were still quite tight. One of the local techs had relayed he'd not seen a 2-LS that would have this type of failure. YMMV obviously. Any pics of this part so we can see the separation?

 

FWIW I think every generation LS400 had a similar design as far as the lower ball joint is concerned. And a failure like this is pretty rare.

 

OEM all the way on these. I'll try to get pics up when I get to start working on it. Gonna try to tow it tomorrow, if I can shovel it out. They plowed the snow up against it. Only car in the lot. Them bastards, gotta be 3 feet of snow around it. Idiots screwed themselves also cuz after I do tow it out they still have a 3 foot mountain of snow right at the front door of their store. I'll let ya know what happens when I'm done, probably next weekend.

 

my balljoints on my 97 had about a 1/4' of vertical play causing some knocking noises over low speed bumps. It could've been a combo of that and the sway bar body bushings/endlinks since I could also literally move the front sway bar side to side when on the ground. I had 253k miles and there still was grease in the balljoints with the boots intact. I found this odd but I guess they were just worn out. Usually a boot breaks and then it makes a ton of noise by drying up with no grease and then fails but mine were fully greased.

 

I (Jon) changed my lower ball joints on my 99 back in April of 2015 at 190k... I am at 208 now. . I did not feel anything, Jon just said they had some up and down movement, and should not have any..

 

And how for sure do you know OEM is not from china? OEM means absolutely nothing these days, unless its OEM NOS and from the Toyota plant in Japan.

 

Dicer, every OEM part I've gotten for LS400's over the years has been made in Japan. It says it right on the package. I actually recall a couple OE Toyota parts being made in the U.S., but I'm not complaining there.

The main point is that you are safe with OEM parts.

 

OEM (ie- new from factory) lower ball joints of this type will fail without being correctly inspected. What people tend to forget is that Toyota lists ball joints and suspension components as needing inspection every 15k miles or 12months (whichever comes first). The inspection is not purely visual either.

People neglect these on their IS/GS/LS/SC and end up with extreme wear and failure, then complain. It's a common failure on a neglected balljoint,across all manufacturers. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=is...+joint+failure


TL;DR if you never replaced them, check your balljoints properly (not just visually, there's a method for inspection in the FSM), and if you did replace them, check them every year or 15k miles (the same way).