Control arm, ball joint or bushing failure on the 2016 Jeep Wrangler
Only 3 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When control arm, ball joint or bushing failure gets reported
There are 5 reports of control arm, ball joint or bushing failure on the 2016 Jeep Wrangler, 3 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 108,000 miles. It is the 28th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 11,250 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Putting it right typically runs $400–$2,200 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 23 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2017, at a median of 30 miles, and latest on the 2002 at 150,000 miles.
By volume the 2018 carries the most reports, with 26; the 2016 has 5. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
My 2016 manual jeep rubicon unlimited (approx 14k miles) drove/shifted fine on my way to work (about 3 miles, very light traffic) last night, but when I got back in the jeep to head home, the stick-shift was all caddy wompus and I struggled to get it into gear to back out of my parking space. It felt like it had twisted sideways and fallen down. To get it into 1st gear, I had to shove it far to the left toward the steering wheel, and for 2nd gear, I had to practically jam the shifter into my leg. Finding neutral and reverse was tricky--the whole shifter mechanism felt like broken bones and mush. I was able to get it home (thankfully a short drive on back roads where I could go slow and there was no traffic) but was baffled by how it was fine earlier, then suddenly junk. Thankfully I was not on the highway or on a trip somewhere with my daughter in the jeep. A tow truck picked it up this morning at our home because driving it 16 miles to the dealer in the city in heavy traffic (not knowing if shifting would be an option) seemed very dangerous. The rep at the jeep dealer said he had never seen this before, however I discovered many…
Gear shifter "slipped" to the left. I was only able to use 1st and 3rd gears! When using 1st gear, the gear shifter was against my right knee!! I was not able to "find" 2nd gear! I took my jeep to the dealership for repairs as it is not safe to drive! "investigating" online, specifically wrangler forums, there are other drivers who have had this problem. It seems there is a faulty bushing that breaks!
While driving under normal conditions at approximately 5-10 miles an hour on a city street the shift lever (part of the manual nsg370 transmission) dislocated from the shifter mechanism. The shift lever (p/n 52060064ag ) was allowed an unsafe amount of play and was able to turn several degrees in both clock and counter clock wise directions. This prevented access to some gears while driving. Upon inspection, it was noted that the rubber bushing within the metal cylinder housing of the shift lever was cracked and no longer provided adequate tension to hold the shift lever in place. As a temporary fix, I removed the shift lever from the shifter mechanism and wrapped a single strip of duct tape around the rubber bushing. After reinstalling the shift lever there was enough tension for me to engage every gear without any notable play.
Also reported on the 2016 Jeep Wrangler
ABS module or sensor failure
Other engine problem
Other powertrain problem
Other electrical problem
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
Other brake problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 5 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 5 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does control arm, ball joint or bushing failure happen on the 2016 Jeep Wrangler?
Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 10,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is control arm, ball joint or bushing failure on the 2016 Jeep Wrangler?
5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed