OK, replacing a lower ball joint on my brother's 96 Accord. I have a ball joint press thing, BFH, and an impact wrench, so I should be set. Just wondering if I could just pull the axle from the knuckle and pound/press out the ball joint while it's still on the vehicle? Meaning, not pop the upper ball joint and all that stuff. It would save me time.

Thanks!

 

Nobody? I'm getting ready to do it this morning.

 

yes you can remove it while on car and do nothing with upper ball joint remember to remove retainer clip some ball joints have a snap ring you have to remove first before popping ball joing out air hammer works great , to put back in just hammer it in some newer ball joints dont have that snap ring set up so you dont hve to install it unless it is needed

 

Thanks. Already got it installed though. We ended up taking the knuckle off the car though, but we could have probably done it with the knuckle still installed. The OEM ball joint did not have a clip, it was just lightly pressed in. We used a big socket and drove it out. Diddnt take much to get it out. The new ball joint just had to be tapped in and the snap ring installed. Pretty darn easy.

I don't think it fixed the problem though. The camber is off, top of the tire tilts inward. Alignment shop said the lower ball joint was bad, so we replaced it. When we took it all apart, the ball joint appeared to be just fine, but we went ahead and replaced it anyways. The tire still appears to be tilted inward. Could it be a bent lower control arm? After just a couple thousand miles the inside of the tire is starting to wear.

There is also a bad vibration that showed right after when my mom had the car in the shop and they replaced a CV joint on the same side as the ball joint we just replaced. With the wheel off, I can spin the rotor and feel a slight vibration that is not present on the other side. Could they have installed a bad CV joint? What else could be wrong? When I had the knuckle off, I spun the rotor and the bearings felt OK, no resistance or play.

 

could be wrong axle, bad axle or somethig they left loose.....if it happened after they replaced axle and was not there before i would take it back and complain ... sounds like you might have some bent suspension parts ...have you hit any curbs ??

 

or bad wheel bearing.

 

Yea I should have mentioned...my brother hit a curb going pretty fast. He took it to a shop and they told him it was the ball joint.

Vibration was there before the wreck. Unfortunatly it was quite some time ago and my parents never did anything about it at the time (dont know why, makes me mad)

 

i had to replace the ball joint on my 91 accord ex. you might want some kind of blow torch or a sedilene torch because the part in the pick bellow circiled in pink is the biggest bitch to get off. me and my dad went to his foundary and took us like 30 minutes to get it off we would keep a sedaline torch on it and then hit that bitch with a impact wrench took us a while but we got it. [IMG][/IMG]

 

that picture isn't of a 91 Accord EX is it? I thought 90-97 Accord front suspensions looked very similar? That doesn't look anything like my 94 EX did.

 

no its not i just didnt know what to call it so i just found a pic on the net but its the same part.

 

which part are you refering to exactly? The axle nut or the axle itself?

 

the nut that things a bitch and a half

 

yeah, it can be. Make sure you have it unstaked and use a good sized breaker bar or a pipe over the handle of a rachet. Also, do it with the car still on the ground so you don't have to have someone hold the brakes. I broke a couple rachets on my driver side axle nut once, then I found a good combination and haven't had any problem removing the axle nuts since.

 

Impact wrench took mine right off

 

ADAM i am pretty sure you have some bent/damaged suspension parts, control arm ( s ) , chk the cross beams for kinks as well

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by deserthonda &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">control arm ( s ) , chk the cross beams for kinks as well </TD></TR></TABLE>

yep, when I hit a curb I broke a rim, bent the LCA, bent the radius rod and tore a small parts of the rear beam of the front crossmember where the LCA bolts to it.