cajun87
Senior Member
The local dealership has about a dozen brand new lifted and or leveled trucks for sale and about half of those are half tons. I stopped by to take a look at the upper control arms and to find out what their take is on our 2013/14 ball joint predicament is. I should have taken pictures, but EVERY SINGLE HALF TON had ball joint slippage. Not long after I started poking around the trucks a brainless sales associate came and asked if I needed anything, so I asked him about the ball joint issue, he had no idea what a ball joint was and assured me that there is no issue so I pointed to the gaps in the joints and he said that this is not a problem. After a few minutes of discussion we went over to the service department to talk to their "guy" that knows everything. It turns out that a local rim shop, not a 4x4 shop, is contracted to do all the lifts, levels, and rim swaps on all of the vehicles at this dealership and the dealership does none of the work themselves. The service guy has never heard of the upper ball joint issue and has never heard anyone complain about the lift failing. According to him, the rim shop uses approved mopar parts and everything is signed off on and conforms to the factory warranty, and if something was to fail it would be covered under warranty. I asked him about upgrading the control arms to better, stronger arms, and he said that doing this would void the warranty. He insisted that the ball joints and control arms are safe from the factory and will hold up fine with a lift/level. Needless to say I left that dealership somewhat aggravated, we either follow blindly to the advice the dealership gives and risk truck damage but retaining our warranty, or make safe improvements and void suspension warranty. Looks like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place because my truck needs a level.