Have you had problems buying direct from MetalCloak?
Ease of comparison shopping. The ability to buy multiple brands in one transaction. They're generally the same price as buying direct and have sales more frequently than most manufacturers. I've benefited from their loyalty program quite a bit too.
You could send it to me. Then I'll put a few Rick's in it for the weight and pretend. I can show it off, but refuse to open. I'll make up some ridiculous exuse as to why I won't open it.
The rebuild process was very easy and straight forward for the Dyunatrac ball joints. The only thing that sucks is gluing eh rubber boot back on. There is a lot of grease in that area and its requires due diligence to get it clean enough for the glue to stick. I use the same grease that I put in my RCV axles and that stuff is sticky and thick. I used a bunch of cans of degreaser. I think I spent almost as much time cleaning the ball joints of grease so the glue would stick as I did rebuilding the ball joint.
Gluing greased parts together sounds...fun (or some other f word). Assuming I get the same life out of my teraflex ball joints at half the price, when you factor in rebuild kits the 3rd set would still be cheaper (by the cost of the glue at least). I don't see the rebuilding as a benefit as it seems more of a pain than pressing out the old set and pressing in a new one. Am I missing something?
The rebuild process is pretty easy. Way easier than the pressing the old ones out and back in. Plus every time you press the old one out and new ones in it create a wear issue for the axle part that holds the ball joints in place. This is often mitigated by putting a snap ring on the top of the aftermarket ball joint so that the ball joint can't be pulled back through as you see with the Dynatrac.
After 3-4 sets you have to go to knurled and after a couple sets of those, new axles. IMO cleaning grease and rebuilding sounds like a picnic compared to replacing. Haven't replaced any in a JL, but plenty in a JK and it sucks.
comparison shopping for pricing I do across several resellers including manufacturers. This includes forum discounts, manufacturers discounts, military discounts, sales/promotions, loyalty programs, shipping cost, item in stock, customer service, return policy, etc
3-4 sets? 200k+ miles I'm pretty sure the whole Jeep is ready for replacement. Even if I only get 60k out of the teraflex add in the 30k before the 1st set and we are talking 210-270k miles. I've never seen any Jeep that gets wheeled hard last anywhere near 300k miles. The flexing and beating they take has frames and mounts and body panels cracking by then. That's just not a real concern for me. Add in the crazy amount of electronics in the modern JL and I wouldn't trust the thing past 200k on brand new axles let only have ball joints be my number 1 concern.
Good for you?
Show me a rock crawled 300k mile Jeep... that still has stock axles? The imaginary problem shouldn't effect anyone's decision making.
Already done that TSB, and. I can tell the techs are tightening them way above the recommended torque specs and they still click - I think that aluminum knuckle and the top sleeve can't cause the clicking.
OK. For the record, I'm not arguing that there's anything wrong or bad about ordering direct from the manufacturer. You asked for reasons why someone would choose to order from a reseller. It's the same reason that Amazon has become a retail juggernaut. It's easy.
