Funanin

Hey guys, I am used to doing alot of motor work so when it comes to suspension people think of it as being nothing and being easy but apparently this is not the case. I rented the ball joint removal kit (universal) at autozone for 100 bux and it did not have the proper adapters to get in far enough to push the lower ball joint out of my hub assembly. The only thing I can think of to get it out is to take the entire hub off the car and take it to a shop and have it pressed out?! How do you guys do it? How is it done? Is there a special OEM tool Honda uses to do this that I can buy somewhere? Thanks

300whpej

$100??? you got ripped the **** off. there only $13 where i am. anyhow...does the one you have look like this???



all you need to do is place the tool above around the boot and hammer it until pops out. shouldnt take more than 5 minutes max

z6hatchboy

yes just use a fork like above, i do it with the rental from advance auto all the time and my air chisel. But a but hammer will work too just not as fast.

nastyARE

iTrader: (1)

i believe hes talking about removing the baljoint from the hub, not seperating the ball join from the control arms

just take the hub off the car and take it somewhere like a honda dealer or i hear that even some bigger tire places do balljoints, it will be pretty cheap if the only labor they have to do is press one out and press a new one in when its off the car

300whpej

i just re-read the original post. to get it out, leave the nut attached to the LBJ and hammer it out through from bottom to top.

b18cKoupe

^^^ he's talking about pressing out the ball joint not just separating it from the lca. I pressed mine out and in with a bench vice and the autozone tool(c clamp) and the special tool from honda, which is basically just two steel cups. the tools from honda were pretty cheap, probably 30 bucks for both from majestic. The part numbers for the tools are in the helm which I dont have with me right now. There are other ways to do it, but I just bought the tools since I'll use them on all my old pos hondas.

300whpej

getting the LBJ out isnt hard or time consuming, but installing them can be a huge pain. if you have the ability to get to a shop and pay them to press them in, do it and save yourself the headache

burningrex

read

burningrex

my friend just used a vice, steel rod and a hammer... worked out fine

D16SiHatch

yep. i put new lbj's in my car like 2 weeks ago and we used the above ^ lol.

gwl

Along with ball joint press kit, you will need to rent the optional adapter kit. This will have additional jigs to help remove and install the ball joint within the knuckle.

thumper64

What gwl said. You need the supplemental adapter kit, it's like $40 or something, but you get all your money back in cash, every last pennny when you bring the tools back.

Here's what I did. I rented the press, adapters and then used an air impact wrench. With the hubs off, it took like 5 minutes that way to get the old ball joints out and new in. If you lived by me, I'd do it for a pizza.

Funanin

lol- a pizza thats funny. I would prob take u up on that since its so cold out here right now and i myself am in a wheelchair. Im a paraplegic from the waist down from a car accident so I cant walk or anything but I just get down on a creeper and do my stuff. I was a mechanic and went to ATC (automotive traning center) before I got hurt so I still know my stuff, its just physically hard for me to do such things. But yea- the adapter idea is the answer I was looking for. I will have to go re-rent the tool from autozone and see where I can get the custom honda adapter for it so I can get this done. Thanks again guys!

thumper64

If I was of age I'd have said a 6 pack of beer or something, but yeah...

Autozone has the Honda adapters, you just gotta ask for them. They looked at me funny, but after a minute the guy got them. They make the job a million times easier than messing with just the adapters the tool has.

And sorry to hear that dude. If I lived near you I'd more than willingly come out and help you. I think there's a couple guys on here who are paralyzed. What happened, or would you rather not talk about it?

Funanin

I was running from the cops back in 2006 one night in september in my 97 civic ex with a few mods (but nothing serious) and I also have/had a 5.0 mustang that I basically grew up on driving and it was my first car so I used to run all the time in that thing and get away (but a 127hp civic isnt a 300 hp mustang lol) and I was just basically just trying to outrun them I guess (I dont really know or remember because I got knocked out so hard and I have no idea what I was doing or where I was going) in the middle of the night on a 4 lane highway and what we think ended up happening is that I tried to duck down a side street but was going WAAAY too fast and slid sideways into the curb on the corner so both drivers side wheels hit the curb at the same time and the car rolled but instead of rolling across a lawn, on the corner was an almost vertical hill approx 15 feet high. So I rolled UP that and it crushed the roof in and pushed my head down and broke my neck, back and left arm really bad as it launched me through the air and I landed back on all 4's in the middle of the peoples lawn that live on the corner of that street. Here are some pix that the people took for insurance purposes right after it happened...

I cant post any more than 10 pix at once, so I posted all the crash pix- here are the stock pix of what the car USED TO LOOK LIKE:

http://funanin.sc103.info/crash/stock.jpg
http://funanin.sc103.info/crash/stock_2.jpg
http://funanin.sc103.info/crash/stock_3.jpg

As you can imagine- I got pretty banged up and I broke my back right around my nipple line and it cut my spinal cord so I cant feel or move from about 2 inches above my belly button down. I dont need to hear any negative comments, believe me I have heard them all and I learned my lesson so just keep the comments to urself.

D16SiHatch

holy *hit!

its amazing you're even alive after that

thumper64

Definitely, you're lucky to have survived.

300whpej

wooooooooooooooooooooow its a real miracle that you are alive. everyone does dumb things, but i think you have more than learned your lesson.

Funanin

yes- i definitly did. thanks for not trying to critisize guys- the last time i posted these pix I had a bunch of ******** yelling at me telling me it was my own fault for driving that fast on the street and not to come to this forum for petty and a bunch of other **** that just pissed me off because that wasnt the reason i posted them at all. I posted them to show WHY i HAVE to drive a car with ONLY an auto trans and cant drive stick anymore so it might be "*****" but its better than nothing in my current state, and with a turbo i might add, its not very "*****" anymore ;-)

thumper64

I see no point in criticizing you. We've all done dumb things, whether it's buying an eBay shifter or driving too fast. You're not glorifying it, you're showing what can happen if you push the limits too far.

How do you drive if you can't use your feet? Do you have something like handlebars with the gas and brake on them?

I've shocked myself, lit myself on fire, gotten my truck stuck. You live, you learn.

Funanin

haha very true- some things just have alot harder consequences than others and I took this one rather hard. The way I drive is I had custom hand controls fitted under my steering wheel, its actually very simple. All it is, is a lever that is attached under the steering columb with a pole that goes down to the brake so when I push the lever it pushes the brake pedal down and it has a chain attached to it that goes down to another lever under the dash that pulls a cable, which pulls the gas pedal down. I use my left hand on the lever and I have a suicide **** on the wheel that I use to steer the car with my right hand so I can go around corners and such with one hand. Its a really simple but ingenous setup and I love it.

Then the only thing that u may be wondering is- how I get in and out of the car with a wheelchair (especially being a civic because its so small). Well- I dont have a power chair (because they are real heavy and dont come apart so people with power chairs have to drive those big full sized vans with the lift and all). So, because I have a manual chair that comes apart, I chose a 2 door civic because on a 2 door car, the doors are bigger and open further than on a sedan so I can get closer to the seat before I have to sling my lifeless legs in and then lift and swing the rest of my body inside the car. Then I put my seatbelt on so it holds me in the car (and I wont fall out), then I can lean out and take the seat and wheels off the chair and put them behind my drivers seat. Then I put my passenger seat all the way forward and my drivers seat all the way back, lift the frame of my chair from the ground up with one arm and maneuver it between the 2 seats and into the back passenger seat. Then just reset both front seats, start the car and im good to go lol. It sounds like alot but when u do it a few times a day for a few years I can now do the whole thing in less than a minute. So now you know. lol

alphalanos

... holy crap. well the way I remove ball joints is remove the knuckle and step on it with one foot and hammer the ball joint out. then press the new one in with the autozone tool. but you have to use the tool in a way that it wasnt meant to be because the plates that come with it are too big. you might be better off taking it somewhere, im not sure if its possible with just upper body.

HStrolling

Be carefully if you try to hammer out the old one by beating on the end of the stud, even with the nut on it you can still expand the stud and then it will never come out of the knuckle.

If the fork doesn't work, take off and strip the knuckle so you can get a puller on the stud. Put a nice load on the ball joint stud with the puller, than smack the knuckle (near the stud) with a hammer from different directions and suddenly it will "pop" right out.