Ball Joint Removal Help

[MStokes]

I've been struggling with removing both upper and lower ball joints. I broke a ball joint seperater last night and am about ready to try some heat on the spindle tonight. Any other words of advice?

Also, the upper ball joint has four rivets that appear to attach it to the upper control arm. Do these have to be ground off to get the ball joint off?

[Project1970]

Yup - those rivets have to come out. The replacement will go in with bolts intead.

[67Fleetsidedream]

The main tool you will use is a Big F'n hammer. Grind them rivets off or you can use a air chisel. Then knock the spindle off and beat the ball joint out.

Ben

[JHickson6]

hehe

[1971Stepside]

I accomplished this by grinding off the rivets and then punching them out with a punch. I would recommend getting them off the spindle first though if you are going to reuse the spindle. I used a pickle fork and a BFH for that.

The lower ones I had a problem with because the nut would spin the entire ball joint and would not loosen. I finally got a big pair of vise grips to hold the stud and got the nut to come loose. I then used the pickle fork and BFH again. Then I laid the lower control arm out in my yard and beat the ball joint out of it. I also removed the upper arm to beat on the rivets.

Good luck, it sucks but with persistance you get there.

[72step]

HEHE, I was doing exactly that with my truck a couple weekends ago. On that lower one I would try and hit the lower control arm with either a 3lb sledge or bigger if need be. I found that to work better than the separator. Try and hit it as close as you can to the ball joint. On the upper one try the separator. If worse comes to worse, take off the upper control arm and pound it out upside-down on a block of wood with a huge sledge hammer. Oh, and also did you spray the heck out of everything with WD-40 before? I did that, and I had minimal problems.........

[jays68yak]

I would rebolt the lower arm back onto the crossmember and use a pickle fork and a 10 pound sledgehammer (BFH). Make sure you have the truck on good jack stands and dont knock it off.
I have also seen pickle fork ends for an air hammer but I have yet to try them.
There is a lot of bangging involed in getting the stouborn ones off. Atleast youll be bangging something on vday! Hehe

[jays68yak]

Or possibly a small bottle jack in between the two ball joints, pushing them apart and out.

[Don Smith]

They make a tool that fits between the threaded ends of the ball joints you turn it with a wrench to break joints loose but I believe the control arm would have to be bolted up for it to work. It may be avail. from autozone as loner tool

[Ackattack]

I think I used two jacks to seperate the lower control arm from the spindle. don't remember how I seperated teh upper. Then ground the rivets and beat the pi$$ out of it. Worked like a charm.

[robby]

I used a 3 pound sledge (BFH) and one or two wacks on the spindle where it is meaty, perpedicular to the ball joint stud. I wouldn't beat on the control arm much. Pickle fork works good too. don't forget to support the lower control arm.

[BobM]

To remove spindle assembly...support bottom of it with wooden block off the floor. This will eliminate any movement when hitting the threaded to portion of the bottom ball joint. If you don't want to damage the threads on the ball joint, use a brass drift and hammer to dislodge the ball joint from the spindle assemble.

To remove the ball joint from the control arm...support control arm with wooden block(s). Then drive ball joint out of control arm with same brass drift and hammer.

Repeat process for top ball joint...

The trick here is to eliminate any bounce or movement of spindle or control arm that is holding the ball joint. A couple of good raps will usually work.

The wooden support blocks work the best supports as they don't damage control arms, etc.

[Dropt72Shortbed]

pitman arm puller!

seriously, i bought a nice big one off ebay for $14 trimmed the ends a bit so it would fit over the spindle. then just turn the shaft with a ratchet like you would removing a pitman arm.

pulls those suckers right off! best thing is if youre planning to resuse the ball joints it doesnt damage the rubber boots like a pickle fork can.

[406 C-10]

howd you get the spring outta there without knocking the ball joints out?? if you had something like a bottle jack or something like jays68yak said im sure the pickle fork would be more affective. If your planning on getting new ball joints then dont be afraid to pound on the top of the ball joint that works pretty well from my experience.

[MStokes]

Thanks for all the tips. I was finally able to get them out. The right side seemed to take forever, but the left side came out with very little effort. I ended up using WD-40, heat, a ball joint seperator and a 3 pound sledge applied to the top of the spindle.