Hi,
I have a 99 Durango with 37K miles on it--mostly town and highway driving, but some gravel roads, nothing exceedingly rough. For the last year or so, I've been having some vibration in the front end when driving over tracks or rough roads, and, about the time the news came out that NTSHA is investigating ball joints on Durangos, I took mine in for a check. Sure enough--upper ball joints had about 1/4 inch of play in them, plus the inner tie-rod ends had enough wear to call for replacement too.
So....$700 later here we are. I was looking up to see how the investigation is going and found the site
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and found thatthere have also been some problems with Durangos with oil system failures inthe engines. Does anybody know how common this is, and what engine has beeninvolved? I have the 5.9 liter V8. They symptoms sound like a coolant tooil leak, which can cause oil sludging. The ball joints are an interesting situation--they are very small, about the size of tie-rod ends on many other vehicles. My son and I compared them to the ball joints on his early 80's S10 truck--the S10 has massive joints compared to the ~5000 pound Durango. It looks like Daimler-Chrysler did a little too much cost reduction.
Thanks in advance,
Lew Barton