CARLI DODGE RAM 2500/3500 UPPER BALL JOINTS 03-12

Carli Extreme Duty Ball Joints are designed, tested, and proven to be the last set of ball joints you'll ever buy. Featuring a unique, proprietary design that literally had years in the making, these ball joints will deliver a noticeable improvement that can be felt all the way at the steering wheel and will outlast the rest of your drivetrain.

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. When you cut into the factory ball Joint, you find 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 they utilize 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. You’ll also notice the channel in the pin itself providing 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.

Now that the design improvements are clear, how can Carli be so confident in the materials that they feel wear-surface isolation can be eliminated? Carli has tested every possible material and process to land on this final iteration since the inception of these lifetime ball joints in 2007. The process starts with masking. The ball joints are masked, all but the wear surface with 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 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 anti-seize and Redline CV2 grease to assist in breaking in the wear surfaces.