LCA nut unthreading, pop when turning, Looking for help!

So I have a 2002 tundra with king shocks and a solo motorsports UCA. as you can see in the picture my LCA nut is unthreading even over the cotter pin. The shock is set for a mild lift, only about an inch, and I've checked and tightened all the other bolts. I had this issue previously after installing the shocks and didn't notice for some time but ended up replacing the LCA and lower ball joint when I did. The truck has been aligned and was always tightened down when on the ground.
Honestly I'm a bit stuck right now and I'm not sure how to keep that nut from backing off!
I can also upload some better pictures!

 

Not doubting you at all but is the nut the correct size? It could have been wrong or defective from the manufacturer. Interior threads on the nut or stud stripped? Make sure the nut isn't cracked as well. I would start with replacing the nut and see what happens.

 

OEM lower ball joint? Did this castle nut come with the ball joint you installed? Or did the castle nut come off the old ball joint and you re-used it on this one?

 

Well that nut came brand new with the ball joint so its definitely the correct one. It wasent loose or anything weird also. I did not check for cracks but didnt notice anything out of the ordinary.
My original guess was that the ball joint broke and siezed in place preventing it from rotating when I turned the wheel. That would cause the threads to turn and then eventually turning off the nut. Now that theres a new ball joint in there and its still happening its gotta be something other than the ball joint. I will inspect the nut closely tho!

 

They are not oem, picked it up from orileys and the nut came with it which I used. Did not reuse the old nut.

 

Is there a washer under the nut? Should there be?

 

I don't believe so, don't see one on the oem part diagram either.

 

Non-OEM LBJs are a bold move on a first gen, 'specially if you're looking to use those Kings to their full potential.

Assuming you used a torque wrench. One other thing that comes to mind, is that the 04-06 trucks have different LCAs and LBJs, the taper on the LBJ might be different. The LCAs you put on are for an 02?

No washer underneath the castle nut.

 

Yeah I know its risky haha, im now starting to think that could be part of the issue.
But I just double checked the LCAs I got and they are for a 2000-2003, good call though. are the ball joints also different?

 

Yeah, the lower ball joints are also different. But if for some reason you bought the 04-06 ball joint, you wouldn't have gotten this far. Who knows, could be the O'Reilly brand being sucky.

@assassin10000 Any thoughts?

 

I would not be so sure on that one. I’ve had the wrong hardware come with parts on multiple occasions.

 

Good point, I'm pretty familiar with how a nut should fit and this one did not seem out of the ordinary as far as I can remember

 

Except for the fact it won’t stay in place and even backs over the cotter pin?? A proper fitting nut should not be doing this.

Try a little bit of thread locker. But if you are backing off that much there is a larger problem I would prefer to remedy compared to the thread locker band aid.

 

Yeah I agree, but this is the second one to be doing this so It leads me to think its something else and not the nut. Right now I am leaning towards just replacing the balljoint assembly with oem.

 

I missed that this was the 2nd ball joint to do this.
I would certainly not be buying them again.

 

Well the first one I got from rockauto, can look up the manufacturer, the one currently on there is from orileys

 

Heres the first one I had: MEVOTECHGK90262

 

I would not be surprised if they made them for O’Reily. That being said their stuff is generally decent OEM replacement. Upgrade to run with Kings, not so much.

 

True I should've known better, but it also hasn't seen dirt since being installed. Think I should be worried about the LCAs? Not really seeing much besides normal driving now a days.

 

Same thing happened to me on an OEM ball joint. taper had not seated far enough. Grease that thing with anti-seize and use a light impact. Then back it off a tad and do your torque adjustment.

 

Thanks for the advice!! Will definitely try this first.

 

Did you also have popping noises while turning?

 

yup
I thought it was something else, but when I raised the weight off the wheels and used a breaker bar to check play at the ball joint, there was about 3 mm up and down. And the nut was not torqued any more

 

Awesome, Ill try this out. thank you!!

 

It has always blown my mind that Toyota designed the ball joints this way. The weight of the truck hangs from that ball and socket and wear pulls them apart instead of pushing them together. They had to consider that the failure mode would be catastrophic.

Tacomas from 1995-04 had a the same dumb design.

 

Yeah I was pretty surprised myself seeing this when I switched from a taco to my tundra.

 

For my Tacoma, I wasnt messing around with it being such a safety issue and I replaced the originals with OEMs before they showed any signs of wear (140K miles if I recall). Camelback Toyota had the best deal at the time.

I cannot say that I have ever seen a high speed ball joint failure story. All of them seem to be low speed, gravel and parking lots. I suppose the reason for that could be that the ensuing wreck is so bad that it never makes it to the forum for discussion.

 

Yeah thats a bit scary, I think it would fail right after a turn and twisting the nut off far enough though

 

Sorry, I think I went off the rails a bit. I was not referring to your issue. I was referring to the actual ball/socket of the joint separating design problem.