Ubj

I know it's best to stick with Toyota brand lower ball joints anyone had any luck with upper ball joints from O'Reilly's or AutoZone I'm in need of something quick and Toyota take a long time to ship and deliver

 

You may find the local dealer already has it in stock. But check this thread: https://www.tundras.com/threads/1st-gen-parts-corner-of-shame-oem-minus-or-plus.122591/

and watch the videos I posted on the 1st page. You’ll see why people don’t fuck around with store brand parts. They all have plastic in them, where OEM use metal, which is why people choose OEM. If you’ve never had the pain of pressing out uppers, you’ll quickly see why people don’t want to go in there for another 10-20 years reaaaaaally quick.

but if someone did use aftermarket uppers and they had luck, it should be in that thread.

 

I'd go with an OEM and have peace of mind about not having to do the job again for a long time.

I'd call a few local dealerships and see what they have. I've recently placed a number of orders with Ourisman Toyota for parts and always had them in under a week. Of course they are in the state next to me so that helps.

I will also say I placed a large order with Joe Joe on Facebook. I actually got my upper ball joints from him. I saved my parts quote from Ourisman and sent it to him and he beat the price for me. When the package arrived it had a hole in it (was a big heavy box, so I'm sure poor handling at UPS was the cause) and 1 of the upper ball joints were missing. I took a picture of the hole in the box before I even touched the box, then went through it to see if anything was missing then sent him a picture and told him an upper ball joint was missing and he overnighted me another one. Point being, you may be able to get someone to overnight one to you.

 

To this point, I’m lucky living in Atlanta because there are a handful of local dealerships. They’re getting stuff from a warehouse somewhere around the city. But some have a bunch of parts on hand because, let’s be real, they run a service department where those parts are getting changed on customer vehicles due to normal wear and tear. Generally speaking though, they get parts in overnight from that warehouse. So I can use the sticky thread info to buy the parts from Toyota @ https://autoparts.toyota.com and choose my local dealer as a pickup point, and have the parts ready to pickup within 48 hours. If I call the dealership, they can scan all other nearby dealer inventory also, and confirm if any are in stock now, and if the warehouse has it. If the warehouse has it they can get it delivered next early AM (6am-8am).

 

You find yourself in the pickle of. You're gonna have to buy whatever shit product you can on the fly. Then ASAP put a OEM one in there or if you get aftermarket UCA's there's often a different UBJ install.

if you insist on riding out the aftermarket garbage. You may find yourself looking at a few thousand $$$ in repairs down the road.