Got my truck in the shop right now. Took it in because of what I thought was a front axle bearing noise and wearing out the front tires. It's a 2002 f150 with 200,000 miles on it. Turns out both outer wheel bearings are bad along with ball joints and all the steering components. The bill will be almost as much as I paid for the truck. Really having trouble putting that much into it but I dont want to pay the elevated price for a replacement truck right now. Ughh. There's no easy solution to this.

I feel for you and understand your plight. More or less in the same boat as you but what choices do we have? About the only positive thing about fixing your current truck would be cheaper insurance than with a new(er) one.

Do it yourself and just pay for an alignment. Will cost about 25% of what that shop is charging you

Anymore they double the cost of parts then double that for labor

Surely the cost of fixing it is less than what it would cost to buy a similar truck. And now you have a truck with a front end good to go another 100,000 miles.

if it is running well I would do it

if there is a laundry list of other issues maybe not ,but used trucks are only going up in price lately between money worth less and no/not enough new trucks

if my son hadn't rolled my 2004 with 260K on it I was absolutely going to rebuild the steering parts in the front end I paid 2550 for it and put tires and oil in it between 2016 and 2020. it ran great

they quoted me 1600 to do the front end

I could probably have done it myself for 300 in parts then had them do an aliment and put new tires on it

it started and ran great had AC it got a new drivers seat not long before I bought it so it sat good it's only issue was rust

if you get 20K more miles out of it and 2 years 2K in repairs is money in the bank there is no such thing as a sub 100 dollar a month vehicle any more for sale that will be better than what you have.

if you do it yourself make sure every new joint has a zert fitting

if you have them do it , insist on zert fittings on every joint also

grease will make those same parts last several times longer

i know your pain. My old truck which is just really the trapping rig has went through about 3 front ends, and is currently in the shop getting a new motor. I spent about 4 grand this spring upgrading as much as i could to the front end. Let me tell you this, anything short of moog problem solver will not stand up and is not worth your money even playing with it. I have bought cheaper precision uppers and they went bad almost immediately. they say they are made by moog, if it is then its their lowest grade they wont even stick their name on it. Also when you buy moog you need to make sure its the problem solver series. I ended up going with some race uppers made from tube steel and a heavier duty ball joint. Ive replaced the rack and pinion not too long ago and it had moog outers and inners on it so thats been ok. Even with all that if you use it as much as i do then you can expect to replace ball joints every season or two. Stupid truck is too heavy to be up and down terraces and hard creek crossing. I also replaced all the shocks and struts. Ive also replaced the 4x4 a few times. the last time i replaced the vaccum actuator thing on the fire wall and replaced all the vaccum hoses and it lasted for a while. Right now i think both hubs are seized up in the locked in position. I just use the 4x4 button to disengage the spider gears in the front end. Thats about as good as its gonna get, unless you wanna replace hubs and actuators which is 600 just in parts. So for now the 4x4 works, i will tear it apart and fix that when it goes out, thats easy enough. About a month or so ago i started it and the timing belt broke a guide or snapped. With 250k miles on it and it leaking oil and such i figure best to just get a crate motor and be done with it.

when i was replacing the front lower control arms i found that from all my off road use and hitting holes in high grass and such, I had bent the front bracket of the lower (that is welded to the frame) back an inch or more. I had a time with it. The bolts that went through the lower were seized to the rubber boot and you couldnt drive it out with a sledge hammer. Went through about 30 bucks in sawzall blades before we found a side grinder with a thin blade to cut them out. Also those are special order only from the dealership and 75 bucks each. you need 4. Then we had to use a bolt and washer to push the bracket back forward without breaking it from the frame to put the new lower back on. The old lower had actually bent and squeezed together at the mounting points.

Say what you want about ford but if it was a dodge or chevy i would have had it in pieces and would have left me in the woods somewhere. So far the old ford has not. Also all those repairs are STILL cheaper than even a good used truck payment.

keep an eye on the stupid ball joints because the first thing you notice is its destroyed your front tires. Keep it aligned as best you can.

That should be a hub assembly on that. No inner and outer wheel bearing. Upper and lower ball joints etc your looking at $600 or so in parts. Not hard to replace any of that yourself. If you have it done remember that they have to tear it half apart to do upper and lower so labor charge for the bearing assembly should be minimal. Same if they do anything to the steering cross bar. Not sure what they actually call that. Last time I did this is took me about 3.5 hours to replace upper/lower, struts with leveling kit, brake calipers and rotors. Hardest part is getting the ball joints out without spinning them.