A Loose Alignment Cam Reveals Bad SPC Upper Ball Joints

TL;DR - A loose alignment cam led me to discover that my SPC Upper Ball Joints (UBJs) are toast. Luckily, the alignment cam was an easy on-the-trail fix, and the UBJs could wait until I got home.

Someone's front end looks a little off.

As we were wrapping up our afternoon on one of the more technical trails in Capitol Reef National Park, I noticed a squealing coming from the front tires as we transitioned from dirt to pavement. Squealing isn't all that unusual when I'm aired down to ~17psi, but this time it was happening when I was driving in a straight line; normally the squealing only happens when turning.

Luckily for me, the scenery was spectacular, and a quarter mile away, my buddies had already pulled over to snap a shot of some sandstone buttes. As I rolled up on their position, I hopped out to take a quick look at the situation. It wasn't pretty.

When there are views like this to be had, it is important to prioritize them, regardless of how bad the situation with the truck may be.

Yep, that's a little off.

Naturally, I got plenty of laughs - mixed with a bit of concern - as I pulled in behind two other 1st Gen Tacomas. I initially wondered if I'd somehow bent one of my spindles. Monte and Zane threw out the possibility of my alignment cams coming loose, or perhaps my lower control arm bushings being worn.

Luckily, none of these - with the possible exception of a bent spindle - would be trip-ending, though we all acknowledged that there was a reasonable chance that my relatively new Kenda Klever RT tires - clearly wearing heavily along the outside edges - might need replacing sooner than I'd envisioned.

Having a quick look on the side of the road, we gave the tires a nice rock to see if the LCA alignment bolts were able to move inside the LCA bushings. If they could, that would be a good indicator that the bushings were shot.

To Zane's surprise, we didn't see any movement in the LCA bushings. We did, however, hear a clunking that could only mean one thing: my upper ball joints (UBJs) were toast.

This is not the sound you want to hear from your UBJs.

As with the stance, the clunking from my UBJs got a good chuckle out of Zane and Monte, but none of us thought that the minimal movement - while not good - would cause quite so much chaos with my caster.

Having determined that the truck wasn't falling apart, we resolved to figure out the crux of the problem in camp and jumped back in our driver seats for a few dozen miles of pavement.

Two hours later, having found a level spot to work and with the skid plate removed, we found the culprit: my rear driver alignment cam had come loose, allowing the cam to rotate and throw off the alignment.

Great news!

Camp fix.

A couple wrenches were all we needed to rotate the cam into approximately the right position, and Monte really reefed on the nut to ensure that it would stay put for the remainder of the trip. After that, new UBJs and an alignment would be the - easy, and final - fix.