lets talk about uniball upper control arms

[troyboy162]

ok so im in need of new ball joints, and i run longer then stock front shocks so the stock linkage binds at full droop. in fact to install these longer shocks, as alot of you know, takes some major force to drive the arms down far enough with a bottle jack wedged in the wheel well.

so i started researching options. the all-pro uniball arms are a pretty good solution and upgrade i think. but ive read alot about uniball arms not having much range at stock arm lengths(not long travel kits).

a few posts on the net talk about the extra range a ball joint provides over a uniball like this one:
http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/975608-post24.html

another is the old sorenen steel Frankenstein front end that uses ball joints on aftermarket arms for extreme droop:
http://www.sonoransteel.com/ultimate_spacer.html

also this post seems to show pretty poor droop potential on what i think is a tacoma(same front end as me):
http://www.tacomaterritory.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121720

this tacoma seem to have enough movement though with some coil overs so its confusing:
http://www.parksoffroad.com/tacomamods/allpro1inuni/allpro1inuni.htm

so i cant figure out if uniball stock length arms are for me or not. i dont need extreme droop, infact id rather not, but i dont want any less droop then i have now...maybe a bit more. i was certain, like alot of people, that uniball arms gave an extra inch of droop but theres too many posts out there that dont seem to back that up.

also smack me if im thinking too hard about this purchase lol. ive got too much time to web crawl

[4x4mike]

I always thought that uniballs were noisy, hard to keep clean and wear out. I remember looking at some a looong time ago but they seemed to be more than I wanted to deal with.

[Terracoma]

With extended-length shocks, you will benefit from uni-ball upper control arms.

Disregard that third link you found, that guy has way too much pre-load lift, much more than your 881s are giving you.

[914Runner]

IIRC, those aftermarket upper A-arms that use the stock ball joint are no longer available. Consensus seems to be that the Total Chaos and Camburg upper uniball arms are the best. I plan on going with the Total Chaos ones myself.

Tacoma Territory has countless threads on this very subject. It's been beaten to death many times over.