Ball Joint Help

[68_Step]

I am in the process of replacing (or trying to!) the upper and lower ball joints on my 67. I borrowed a ball joint press from O'Reilly's and had 2 problems with it. (1) the throat depth is not deep enough for it to reach to the stud, and (2) the round piece that was supposed to fit on the stud to press it out was to large in diameter, would not fit. The part that connects the upper and lower control arm was in the way.

My Haynes manual showed a homemade special tool to push out the lower ball joint out, there is a photo below of a quick version I put together - the bolt was to small for the job. It wanted to shift in the socket, may work better with a bolt closer in diameter to the inside of the socket.

After tinkering for a couple hours this afternoon I have a few questions:

Do I have to remove the brake / backing plate assembly?

How much stuff do I have to take apart to get the lower ball joint off?

Will that homemade tool in the Haynes manual work?

If I am replacing both the upper and lower, it there a "best" order do do it in? The upper is original, riveted in place.

Can anyone give me a basic step by step for pulling and replacing them?

Is there a good tutorial on the net about how to do this?

How in the heck did that much stuff get caked on in 46 years? I cleaned. scrapped, and cussed for about an hour and a half just so I could see the nuts!