I had to replace a seal on my transaxle, which entitled taking otu the axle etc etc. Anyway I undid the bottom ball joint to get everything loose. Now when I try to put the nut on and tighten it, everything spins freely. Any Idea on how I can get it tight? It's a 89 honda accord lx-i btw. Passenger side lower ball joint. Thanks!

 

make sure that the shaft that slides into the lower control arm doesn't have any grease on it. I think if there is grease on it, it will spin like you are seeing.

 

It does'nt, I cleaned everything up pretty good before I started re-assembling it.

 

not saying you did, but did you hit the threads while it was disassembled? If you maybe hit the threads with something, you could have damaged the thread not allowing the nut to go on right, causing the stud to spin. Or could you have cross-threaded it somehow? Double check the threads to make sure they are in good shape. Maybe even run the nut on there without the LCA and see if it goes on or gets stuck somewhere.

Also, how did you remove the LCA from the ball joint? The reason I ask is because you can damage the threads by removing the wrong way. If you use a hammer to hit the side of the LCA where the ball joint is you could have hit the threads and damaged them. Or if you used a gear puller, you could have mushroomed the threads on the end if you didn't use the castle nut or if the castle nut wasn't down all the way. If you used a pickle fork then you should be fine, just maybe a broken boot but the threads should be ok.

 

Never played with a honda yet, but with my BMW's I do this:

I use a hydraulic lift to raise the ball joint tightly into its spot. The pressure applied keeps the shaft from spinning.

 

yes, that can help but first make sure the threads aren't damaged.

 

Yep the threads were damaged it turns out. Friend brought over a..thread chaser? or somthing? I'm not sure what it was called. One thing to clean the threads of the bolt/stud and another think to clean the nut.

Thanks for the help fellas!

 

yep, no problem. Glad to see you got it working.

When he "chased" the threads, how much material did he remove? The reason I ask is becasue you don't want to be removing to much material, it will weaken the stud causing it to possibly fail. But as long as it was only like one or two threads that needed to be fixed then you should fine. Did you figure out what cause the threads to get damaged?

 

It did'nt remove much material at all, just enough so the nut would go on good. Hah I think what messed up the threads was me bashing on it with the hammer tyring to get it loose.

 

ok, just didn't want to see you remove too much material and have it fail on you because the threas weren't strong enough anymore. Glad to see it worked out though.

 

next time use a 2 ton puller. get it from auto zone or buy a simple one for $10 on strauss auto center.