Lower ball joint nuts missing or fell off??

[Fordified1]

Alright. Extra ugga duggas for me.

Don’t tighten them too tight, they’re not very big. I’d say the OP’s example were never torqued at all. They were probably put on hand tight and skipped the torque somehow. There have been multiple instances of various nuts and bolts not being tightened at the factory and parts found in the skid plates etc. there was a recall on the upper ball joint and everybody immediately checked their ball joints, but I guess that was a couple years ago..

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[Fordified1]

We won’t talk about my dumbass leaving the upper left ball joint nut hand tight and heading to the Alpine loop in Colorado. My Broncos sat on Imogene pass for two days before I had the parts to fix it.
Supposedly all those lock nuts on the front end are one and done so you’re supposed to replace them every time you take them off but they’re pretty good at locking multiple times.

Also, I would like to mention those ball joint threads are long enough you could double nut them if you felt the need after installing your new lift or whatever.
Back in the day all ball joints had castle nuts with a cotter pin. Jeeps still do.

 

[mrjking2000]

I gotta say, I'm not so sure this is 'as built by Ford,' since with 13k miles on it it's already got a new set of tires - those aren't factory tires on any model I'm aware of. If it's been lifted or any of the suspension has been worked on, without a cross-hole for a cotter key there's a good bet those were 'torque to yield' nuts, meaning they should have been replaced when it was taken apart.

I have a sneaking suspicion that what you encountered with that rig (presuming it's not yours) is someone who isn't telling the entire truth.

yeah just going off what i was told but you have a valid point there.

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