Ball joints .......how to remove ???

[Guest Anonymous]

I noticed I have alot of slack in right hand side ball joint...I guess that explains alot of wheel hop and vibration. What method would be best to pull ball joint in control arm with out having to dismantle too many suspension parts??? Thank you RB

[jerry]

my guess is that you are looking at removing the bottom strut 'swing arm' (don't know the true name) connected to the bottom of the strut housing. if you are lucky you'll be able to blithely snip the safety wire and effortlessly remove the three 'special' bolts holding it on.

if you've got a stubborn bolt don't force it or you will probably shear it off then your carefree attitude will take a sudden turn for the worse. probably a good idea before wrenching any of those three bolts to clean first and spray a liberal amount of your favorite oil soaker-type stuff-in-a-can. a little heat might help too.

oh yea, you might need to remove the tie-rod end, but i'm not sure. if you have original ball-joints they're installed from the factory with rivets. then, you'll definitely want to liberate the 'swing arm' from the tie-rod end in order drill out the rivets while secured comfortably on your workbench.

and if you shear off one of those bolts....

then you'll be removing the entire strut assembly and possibly utilizing an extractor or drilling it out with the help of a drill press as i've had to do on one occasion.

[scottt]

Here's how I did it.

Jack up car and support on jack stands.

Remove sway bar link from control arm. Remove nuts from inner control arm bolt and radius arm. Remove tie rod end from steering arm, be careful not to damage the boot if you're going to reinstall it.

Cut safety wire from the 3 bolts at the base of the strut housing holding steering arm to strut. Remove the 3 bolts ( 14mm ) and remove the control arm/steering arm from the car. Be careful with these bolts, the heads are very short and are easy to strip.

Now the fun part. If your ball joints are still riveted to the control arm, they're original and have been driving around for about 35 year. If they're bolted, then they've been replaced in the more recent past. I found the nuts on the tops of the ball joints to be very rusty and difficult to remove. I had to mount them in a vice, drive an impact socket over them and impact them off, ugly job. If you're not in the rust belt, it may be easier for you.

Drive the ball joint out of the arm, grind the rivets off the ball joint and replace. Make sure the joint is on top of the arm, not below.

After reinstalling the large nut on top of the ball joint I gave them a heavy coating of grease, hopefully when I need to replace them again in 20 years it'll be easier.

At this point, it is just a matter of reinstalling everything, including safety wire and cotter pins. It is a good time to change the control arm bushings as well.

Good luck.