Pros & Cons

All of the road race cars I work on have uniballs and heims. We just check them for excesive play and replace them when they wear out. Never grease them.

i have a question. when you guys are useing the uniballs on their sides to get tons of travel. how does it affect turning radius? i would love to see a pic of a vehicle with that suspension while turned fully locked.

idk why people are having such a hard time understnding the advantages Shperical Bearings have over balljoints.

And i still cant get the people that think they will collect dirt...the auctual bearing is sealed, dirt does not magically find its way into the teflon lined bearing. Whatever dirt does land on it, can easily be whiped off with a rag.....just like you would any other item on your truck.

Originally posted by laynframe90



Edited: 3/19/2007 5:06:20 PM by laynframe90

I have been running heim joints on my truck for 6 years and never had a problem. Still have the same 8 on my 4-link bars that I originally put in them. Oh ya and I live on a dirt road, I have never greased them, ever, and they don't squeak or do anything out of the ordinary. I use personally regular ball joints. I think that uni-balls may give you extra travel on certain applications but it all comes down to preference.Chris you just don't grease them cause your as lazy as I am. LOL

i have one question. when you use uniballs how do you get the shaft of the uniball to fit correctly in the spindle?

Originally posted by BioMax



I think it's funny when I hear about how crappy spherical joints are. If they were so bad, I don't think that there would be ball-joint upgrade kits to convert your ball-joints to uniballs for LMSC race cars. Or maybe the off-road guys should convert everything over to ball-joints and eurethane. Anybody that has had problems with spherical bearings has either purchased cheap parts, installed them improperly or has been given bad information.

If you use the JMX or RSM series heims with the teflon liners, you shouldn't ever have to lube them or have any concerns with dirt. The far to commonly used CM series stuff should be avoided, with or without teflon.

You can buy uniball stuff from HM-Engineering.com as well as heims, bungs, misalignments...

Exactly Max, I couldn't agree more. I've never had a problem with a heim joint in any of the for links I've done over the years because I took the time to do a little research to make sure I got the right parts for my aplication. Thanks for doing your best to set people straight on heims/uni balls, I know that alot of people on this site value and trust your opinion, myself included.

Thanks Smiley...

The amount of steering that you get out of a vertical uni-ball or heim set-up depends on the spherical/misalignment relationship. There is a table on the www.hm-engineering.com website. The right size upper spherical would be a 3/4" spherical with a 1/2" spacer. That would offer up to 28 deg of steering in each direction. As little as that may sound, I can assure you that it would be enough for most applications. Most of you would be forced to limit your steering because of big wheels anyhow.

Concerning yourself with the spherical/spindle interface is good. There are several ways to do it, most of which had been addressed recently in another thread. But just for good measure, this is how I have done it. One traditional style and one vertical.

Edited: 3/21/2007 7:36:14 PM by lunatiksblazer

this may end up ebing a double most but i didnt see it appear the fist time so what the F....anyways biomax you are the god of the suspension forum. my machine design 2 class tonight we were learning about teflon lined bearings, pretty sweet stuff does the work so we dont when it comes time to lubercate. well i would these rebuildbale uniballs on a 4x4 site and wondered what everyone thought, kind of sucks though u need to grease em...

I did some stuff with Jonny-joints when they first came out and I worked with Super-pivot joints here recently, but I think those are far better quality and probably more expensive. That type of joint would work great on a trail-rig or a minitruck, but the desert trucks require a little more toughness. If someone is using these on a class 8 unlimited, Trophy Truck or class 1 car I would be interested to know how they hold up.

Originally posted by haktup



Originally posted by laynframe90



Edited: 3/19/2007 5:06:20 PM by laynframe90

I have been running heim joints on my truck for 6 years and never had a problem. Still have the same 8 on my 4-link bars that I originally put in them. Oh ya and I live on a dirt road, I have never greased them, ever, and they don't squeak or do anything out of the ordinary. I use personally regular ball joints. I think that uni-balls may give you extra travel on certain applications but it all comes down to preference.Chris you just don't grease them cause your as lazy as I am. LOL



Ha ha ha, I actually have the teflon lined Heim joints so I don't need to grease them.