Dwight Schrute

I spent all day yesterday replacing my lower ball joints. I learned a lot about what not to do and what to do.

First thing you need to do is break free your axle nuts, then remove the castle nuts off the tie rod and lower ball joint. Don't forget to remove the circle clip off the lower ball joint which is a BITCH to get off unless you have a special tool. You also need to remove the cover of the wheel bearing to get the ball joint out.

If you don't have a ball joint press, which is recommended to press it back in and can be rented at auto zone, advance auto parts, etc, then you want to take a large hammer and hit the ball joint out. Watch out for the dust cover to the brakes, i got mine a couple times. You don't want to hit the ball joint on the threads! You want to hit the joint out on the edge where the boot is. It will come out with 3-4 hits. I tried for the longest time to bang it out on the threads and it didn't budge.

Now you take your new ball joint and put some oil around the metal part. then you put it in place on the knuckle. Next you take a RUBBER mallet and hit it into place. I tried a big hammer and a socket and it also ended up going in lop sided and I actually ended up ripping my boot and had several dents on the the top of my ball joint which shouldn't really matter. After you have it in place, you can either take a socket or piece of pipe and put it on the top of the joint and start banging it in all the way because it's already started ,so it cant get lopsided. Or, you can do what I did and finally rent the ball joint press and press it in. Bolt everything back up, don't forget the cover on the wheel bearing. Also, my new ball joints didn't utilize the circle clips.

Anyways, if i had to do this again it would probably take 1-1.hrs at MOST for both sides. I ran into a couple of snags such as stuck axle nuts, which I got of with air, and the ball joint getting in lopsided and ripping the boot. the rubber mallet is just to make sure it's in good before you use a real one and put some pressure on it. Although I do think the rubber mallet is capable of getting a new one back in.

EG2Driver

good info. Main thing to know is to hit the ball joint on the boot area and not the threads cause u'll get nowhere.

Dwight Schrute

yep i spent a lot of time figuring that out. the second main import thing is start it with the rubber mallet. i was getting mad at mine so i was banging on it hard when all it need was some soft even force that the mallet supplies.

vti444

nice write up




Modified by vti444 at 10:37 PM 4/4/2007

vti444

ok, im attempting this right now (im complete novice and pretty useless working on cars)

the driveshaft sits right above the joint so what do you do ? you say remove bearing cover but theres a big **** boot there and i gather you have to take all that apart to get to this bearing cover ? anyone got pics

ekb16a

i think the best way to do it to take the knucle out working on small space is kinda hard

vti444

yeh i gave up, looks like best way is to remove whole knuckle

compo1

good info,i took outmy knuckle, brought it to a machine shop and he pressed in a balljoint for $ 50/ball joint was 20 bucks,so $70 total or 140 bucks both sides...the shop wanted $350 for both side so i stll saved big time...compo1