69 C10 front end rebuild

[roadking-111]

I am in the tear down stage for my pick up. I knocked out the lower ball joint from the control arm and it pretty much exploded in pieces. Can anyone tell me if my control arm should look like this after the ball joint is removed? I dont know if my tie rods need to be replaced either. The truck has 58K on the chassis.

[mclairmo]

Part of the ball joint is still in the control arm. The best way to remove the ball joint is to use a hydraulic shop press to press them out and new ones in. Alternatively, you can use a C-Clamp style ball joint press. However, they can be a bear to use. Tie rods wear out easily after many many years of use and should be replaced unless new. To test if they are good, merely try to move the joint in the socket and look for looseness and/or excessive play. The joint should move but be quite tight, no slop. IMO, they are cheap and you should just replace them if you have the old ones off anyway.

[71tahoe]

Not all the ball joint came out. Also, you can't really tell by looks about the tie rod ends. Is the stud extremely easy to move around? Even so they still may be good. If there was any play or slack in the steering you should replace.

If you don't want to get back into it after it's been greased 20 times and gunked up, then replace them.

They'll probably go bad at different times and now would be the the most convenient so replace them.

On second (fourth) thought maybe you should replace them