I will repeat for SAFETY and avoid ball pin detachment in service, which will certainly result in a loss of steering with the risk of the vehicle going out of control.
The bulletin draws attention to water ingress into the joint causing corrosion & contingent wear .
It doesn't address wear parameters which is best observed by doing an initial alignment test on turntables to observe the actual wear and drift of spec on the ball joint when rotated from lock to lock.
quote:-
When raising the vehicle, monitor whether there is lateral misalignment (radial play) in the supporting ball joint.
Misalignment of more than 3 mm is rated as a considerable defect by the technical inspection associations.
Only the other day we addressed a T1N van that had about 135,000 miles on it, and when the front end was raised the driver's side ball pillar detached itself from the socket.
Sometime I cannot help thinking this bulletin has some policy influence by Dodge .
When this bulletin was released Dodge also refused to deal with excess wear in the same lower ball joint location on PU's, citating water ingress! Until that is, frequent complaints of detachment were experienced across the whole of the NA parc with ball joint failures. Some related to collisions causing injury.
NHTSA had to intervene to change MOPAR policy.
So beware and the joint is cheap at about $60 a pop.
Basically not worth the risk if there are doubts about its serviceability .
Dennis