Carli Extreme Duty Upper & Lower Ball Joint Combo Set (2003-2013 Ram 2500/2003-2012 Ram 3500)

The last ball joint you'll ever buy for your Dodge Ram, the Carli Extreme Duty Upper and Lower Ball Joint Kit

The ball joints start out as a chunk of specialty chosen material which is machined to Carli's unique design and then heat treated to a specified rockwell (hardness). From there, the ball joints head to an aero-space lube company where a proprietary dry-lube coating is applied to a specified thickness. And of course, they are topped off with an accessible zirk fitting for easy servicing. You'll even get a tube of high quality synthetic grease with your ball joint set.

But how did Carli Suspension originally design and create their Extreme Duty Ball Joinst? To know how Carli improved it, let’s take a look at the factory. The Factory Ball Joints are made up of a lower ball joint and upper floating king-pin. The upper ball joint is designed as a pivot point determining the axis on which the knuckle will move and thus, only sees a lateral load. The factory lower ball Joint, features a sealed housing, sleeve, pin and boot. The upper cavity stores the grease from the factory and allows the “hat” of the pin to float up and down as the knuckle raises and lowers through the steering cycle. The “hat” of the pin does not make contact with the housing, it only prevents the pin from pulling out the bottom of the housing. As the hat of the pin doesn’t contact, there’s a coated sleeve that isolates the pin from the housing and it’s vertical surface is the only wear surface for the upper.

The Carli Joints are similar in design in that it utilizes the same style of a floating King-Pin upper but with several improvements in design. You’ll notice Carli’s ball joint has a pin and housing, but the “hat” of the pin contacts the housing. This adds a second wear surface to further distribute the load applied laterally to the ball joint while providing the same failsafe as a factory ball joint ensuring the pin cannot be pulled through the bottom of the ball joint housing. Further, there is no sleeve isolating the wear surfaces eliminating the point of failure. The upper cavity’s size is increased to hold a larger grease reserve and the threaded cap both allows access to the cavity and pin if needed and allows servicing through its zerk fitting. Further, the channel in the pin itself provides a path for grease to migrate to the wear surface. At the bottom of the housing, a Viton Seal prevents the environment from entering the ball joint.

The lower ball joints are the true ball joints in the AAM design. The spherical lower is a ball and socket design allowing lateral misalignment (unlike the king-pin upper). Because the design tracks the knuckle on an imperfect axis, the spherical lower is required to allow the knuckle to move freely with only a slight vertical travel through its steering cycle. By design, the lower factory joint is a pin isolated from the housing by a nylon material loaded from the top and sealed by a press with a boot to keep out the elements. When this composite liner fails, the ball joint needs to be replaced. It’s the old saying, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Carli’s improvement on this design begins with the ability to service the joint. The Zerk fitting is recessed into the top of the joint and protrudes at an angle to be aimed forward and slightly inward to allow access to the fitting without needing to disassemble anything. There are channels machined into the ball surface conducive to grease migration without the use of liners of any kind. At the top, a bronze wear surface preloaded by a disc spring, safety washer and snap ring ensures the ball joints wear surfaces are always held tightly together for optimal performance. Lastly, a rubber seal locks the housing to the pin.

The next step is masking in which the ball joints are completely masked, with exception to the wear surfaces, and they receive a copper plating. Once plated, the ball joints head to carburizing. The carburizing creates an extremely hard surface with a case-hardness (penetrating depth) of 20-25 thousandths. For reference, another process Carli tried was salt-bath nitride which produced 3 thousandths in a best-case scenario. When the ball joint has completed the carburizing/heat treat, they’re stripped of their copper masking leaving the entire joint heat treated and the wear surfaces incredibly hard. From stripping, they head to dry-lube where the whole joint is coated with a corrosion resistant gray coating to project the joint while the lubricity of the coating pairs with ant seize and Redline CV2 grease to assist in breaking in the wear surfaces.

In the event you can somehow wear out these ball joints in your lifetime, you’re protected with the industry’s only ADVANCED REPLACEMENT Lifetime Guarantee. Keep your purchase receipt and know you’re set for the life of the truck. If anything should happen, shoot Carli a video of the play (Excess of .040” vertical or .020” lateral) and your purchase receipt and they’ll have replacements enroute with a call tag to return the defective joints; simple as that. When you receive the new ones, swap them in and send the old ones back with the included call tag.