An old saying comes to mind here " if it ain't broke don't fix it"..... in this community we tend to "fix" everything ... which brings up yet another bit-0-wisdom "let sleeping dawgs lie" your friends maybe giving some sage advise..,.good to know that we can possibly get 7 years on the MC bushings, are you seeing cracks or separation or dry rot?

 

I was under the jeep last night removing skid plates and whatnot. Man, from the side of the jeep looking at that frame rail you kinda forget how much that mount is welded all around the inside of the frame rail. What a beating it looks like to chop that off and grind down. That really tempered my idea . It certainly isn't the $50 in beefy brackets from Barnes that is stopping me. I will likely just live with it for longer.


This is a bit long-winded:

I recall back in the day a lot of folks always viewed these MC joints as "no-maintenance" even though they are really more "low-maintenance". I have always disassembled my arms/joints maybe every 18-24 months to inspect and re-grease with their unicorn tear-infused teflon grease as instructed. It's always been a bit of a pain in the ass tbh, relative to just hitting a grease zerk, but I am a believer in their joints for my purpose. Referencing my build spreadsheet, I installed these at 46k miles, and though I don't have the date I'm positive it was around early 2016. I am just about to turn 115k miles on the jeep now. At 86k I did my final axle swap.....that had to be mid-2019 if I recall. That was the last time I broke the arms down and looked at them. At that time I noticed the bushing on my front upper passenger arm was pretty bad. I had some rips in it. I went back and forth with Matson a couple times regarding typical lifespan and if what I was seeing was normal after ~3.5 years. His commentary was that for some they might last a year, and for others a decade....just all depended on use. He chunked a couple new joints in the mail for free with little pushing on my end. Don't think he cared much either way, just easier to appease someone and have positive experiences. Anyhow, those joints had set on my toolbench for a loooong time. Jeep is pretty much a toy, then covid and all that other crap. I just never got around to addressing the arms or regreasing since. I will say that I run some long shocks and probably get more flex up front than lot of folks running "packaged" lifts. I'm not really shocked that these front uppers were showing some signs of wear with that in mind.

I figured I was probably gonna have to freshen things up at some point so on their last sale I bought new joints for the rest of the arms. Couple weeks ago I pulled the front uppers to replace those joints and here is my passenger side (thought I had a better picture of the bushing out of the arm but guess I deleted it) -



It was hanging on by just a bit and me trying to press the bushing out of the arm (the other direction that you don't see) is what was the final straw that totally separated it.

I have not gotten around to the front lowers or any of the rears but will do so in the coming days/weeks. My driver's side upper looked generally fine, and I suspect the rest will look generally ok as well but plan to pop the new ones in regardless. That passenger upper is really close to the cat so IDK if maybe heat played any part in that or if that was just from articulation.

I have no gripes whatsoever though. I still think MC puts out some of the best products and people that modify like this should always expect to have some maintenance and freshening up as things age. That's all just part of it. If there is anything else that looks abnormal I'll update, but I'm not expecting anything big.

 

Well, I was pretty wrong. These all look bout shot. Even the ones that don't look completely terrible look like they've separated from the internal metal. So in the last week I had been diagnosing some clunking. Sound was forward/backward change in motion, and only 1 time each time. I always knew that sound to be under torqued control arm bolt but all mine were torqued to spec. Apparently though, all my joints crapped out. I had the front lowers and rear upper joints on hand so I replaced the front lowers. man, they didn't look good. Had to order rear lowers and will just do the whole rear end in one swoop as I want to reposition the axle a bit.









Again, I'm not complaining. It's just normal wear over a long period of time with some good use IMO. I might be a lot more surprised if it was just a pavement rig.

 

I wish they had a better way of lubing their joints or do some work on the inside of the housings (groves maybe) so it would hold more lube and offer less resistance to the joint turning in the housing. Any joint is going to have to be serviced from time to time and the duro joints are no exception. Suspension set up has an affect as well as the use. I typically won't use the duroflex joints for more than 14" travel as you will just get too much bind in the system. They are a great joint though for most builds and give a great ride and good flex. Did you have the newer style joint with the Kevlar compound?

I would not bother with the long arm set up as it gives you a minimum amount of benifit with a lot of cost and time to install. Geometry is just to hard to get right on a JK with everything that is in the way. You either compromise the geometry or you hang the brackets down low that catch on stuff. You would get better ride quality by cutting off the lower axle mounts and raising them up thus flattening the arms and reducing axle shift.Get some HD brackets from barnes and weld them in.

 

Hey Tom. These original joints were circa 2016 and I believe before they moved to the kevlar versions. The new ones are the kevlar ones. I noticed the new joints have their "M" logo stamped on em and my old ones did not. I'm figuring that was probably a change at the same time.

I agree....I wish there was an easier way to service these joints from time to time rather than totally removing the arm. It's not the end of the world, but it is can be aggravating with a bent bracket. I absolutely hate that frame-side rear upper nut you have to hold up in the frame rail and little things like having to remove rear bumpstops to get at the axle-side upper bolts. I think servicing things like this are a lot more problematic if you're not somebody that works on your own things.....and probably doesn't think much about servicing wear items in general.