trying to get my motor out with the transmission attached.
I have everything off except the transaxles (saved the best for last)

I got one ball joint separated on the passenger side but cant get the last bit of the axle separated from the tranny. do I have to get the whole thing parallel to the ground by taking the hub off (got the axle nuts loose).

I am afraid I tugged on the outer shaft--I am concerned I separated the joint!! how hard is that to do by accident?

I am also having a bitch of a time getting the other side ball joint separated I already bent a pickle fork and tore the boot and who knows if I damaged the ball itself. I am off to get a separator. I got one of those large C clamp ball joint separator/removers but they are useless with the ball still on the knuckle attached to the hub!

 

The ball joint press sounds like the one that we rented... and it is useless. We used a large tuning fork to pry it.

As for the drive shaft, It should pop right out of the tranny. You might be able to get a flat head in between the end of the shaft and the tranny and start prying it out, but you do need that ball joint seperated if im not mistaken. It may or may not be the best way to do it, but it worked for me.

ALSO... if you tore that boot, yer gonna need to replace that. Once that shaft starts spinning its going to spit the grease everywhere... depending on the size of the tear... Mine dry rotted all the way around.... have to replace both of them.

hopefully I'll be done today

Good Luck.

SLiDE

 

will the forks tear up the ball joint itself? that fork looked toasted once it bent up. I wailed on it with the BFH.

 

Use a Pittman arm puller from Autozone to seperate the ball joints. You can rent them, or buy them for $15.

 

i use a hammer. seriously. look on the arm of whatever ball joint ur trying to loosen. there should be certain points on it that u can hit without doing damage. use a large hammer with hard steady hits. eventually the vibrations will loosen the dirt and grime that has accumulated and it will pop loose.

 

got it out finally . brute force!

 

i wedged a crow bar in there..it isnt the 'proper' way to do things
but i was very careful and it worked

 

Instead of messing with ball joints, I always just pull the bolt that hold the lca to the subframe near the tranny. Then the whole knuckle will move and make it easy to pull the axle.