Which ball joint UCA?

I am planning a suspension upgrade. Pretty sure I'm gonna go with ADS shocks. Tires will be of the 35" flavor. For UCA I'm going with a ball joint instead of a uniball. Dont want the maintenance of uniballs. I am aware of the following options:

Camburg- looks decent but no adjustability. Not sure if this is a problem or not.
SPC- Good arm with lots of good reviews. Adjustable.
Icon (tubular)- Looks like a decent arm? Feel like I heard some forum talk about them not being "good"? Dunno. Not adjustable.
JBA- Seems like people are having decent results, not as much of a track record here. Are these foreign made knock off's? If they are, they're off my list.

Any others I'm missing? Pros/Cons? You guys with the ball joint UCA's chime in and help me spend money!

 

JBA are made in Pennsylvania.

Great customer service so far but haven't installed mine yet...they just came today.

I figured adjustability would compound the problem with getting an alignment. They have 3° of built in caster which will be plenty for my mild "build"

 

What uniball maintenance are you afraid of?

 

Well.... I wouldn't say I'm afraid of anything. I just dont want to deal with having to maintain them. It seems pretty well established that sealed ball joints are less maintenance than an exposed uniball.

Do you have a differing opinion you'd like to elaborate on, or are you just another confrontational Texan?

 

Good to know, I may look further into them. I grew up in Pennsyltucky!

 

I have SPC, probably will be going to MCM uniball at some point, just makes a more robust connection than the ball joint. Throw on some boxed LCA's, and gusseted spindles too. Don't forget cam tab gussets on the frame as well. Spendy enough?? Damn truck building....

 

Well, since you're just another Coloradoan making generalizations .........

 

I was just emailing Matt at MCM and he can provide an ICON delta joint for their UCA instead of the uniball. Apparently ICON makes retrofit delta joint kits for lots of applications. It's a little upcharge but I think I might go this route.https://sdhqoffroad.com/collections...-toyota-tundra-icon-delta-joint-retro-fit-kit

 

Been running Camburgs for the past 10 or so years, no issues at all. Still on stock BJ.

 

Good feedback on the Camburgs. Thanks!

 

I have SPC’s. They require about 6-10 pumps of grease in the zerk fitting every oil change. My alignment number are always great. Easy maintenance and problem free for 32k miles.

 

SPC or Icon tube with a delta joint. I ran dirt kings uniball with my last king setup, they were fine but I live in snow land so they always squeaked.

 

I decided to go with the MCM arms and have them upgraded to the Icon delta joint.
https://iconvehicledynamics.com/acc...ofit-delta-joint-kit-05-up-taco-07-21-tundra/

FYI, Matt at MCM offers this as an upgrade for those desiring a ball joint instead of the standard uni ball. I imagine you could also retrofit the Icon delta joint to any arm that has a 1" uni ball.

 

I got my MCM UCA's with Icon delta joints installed this weekend. All in all, I like them. A few notes for those interested:

The MCM UCA's do have zirk fittings where the UCA mounts to the frame and the delta joint also has a zirk fitting on top. Nice and grease-able at all the points of movement/bushings. The zirk fittings come loose in the kit so you can install and orient them to you liking. Matt even sent some red thread locker for install. No grease included for the bushings, though.

The delta joint doesnt come with any kind of boot or dust cover. These are sealed units and Matt says to just squeeze some grease into the zirk every 3k miles or so. I suppose time will tell if the absence of a dust cover or boot around the ball joint spindle will make an actual difference in the performance and maintenance of the unit. Sounds like SPC's work similarly and do just fine. There is also no retention clip to keep the nut from backing off the delta joint spindle. I'll probably keep an eye on this and re torque at oil changes to make sure that nut doesnt come off. Seems like it would be an easy thing for Icon to add and create some additional piece of mind on a pretty critical connection.

Seating the new bushings into the MCM UCA's was a bit of a pain on the first side, but the second one went a lot easier once I got it figured out. I used my bench vise to press the bushings and seat them fully which allowed me to slide them in place on the truck and work that long bolt back through the engine bay. Getting the bolt through the first couple washers and keeping everything lined up with 2 hands is a little tricky, but not too bad. I also had to clean up some small metal shavings/burrs from the inside of the bushing tubes before pressing new bushings in.

As an added bonus, all it took to separate the stock spindle and stock ball joint was a few good whacks of a hammer on the flat spot of the spindle. No pickle fork surgery needed!

Alignment looks and feels good so far. I was already lifted about 3 inches in the front and I didnt loosen my LCA bolts to install my coilovers and UCA's so I think I can get away without alignment until I put new tires on in a few months. It seems to track and ride fine as is. Clearance between tires and UCA is about the same as it was with stock, though I didnt actually get a measurement on this. I could probably get my index and middle finger between them. I'm running stock wheels with spidertrax spacers and 295/70r18 tires.