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so.. my lower passenger side ball joint had a badly torn boot. it was discovered when replacing the driveshaft not too long ago. after getting the driveshaft in, the ball joint was the next step (i had the upper ball joint off and i was working with the lower one still attached).
on the lower ball joint, the outer bolt came loose without too much effort. the inner one had a different idea. it was beaten, it was heated and beaten, it was greased then beaten again, and still it didn't budge. it broke two mid-size socket wrenches. then, using a large torque wrench and a cheater bar, it cracked a 17mm socket. unable to find any more 17mm sockets that fit the torque wrench, we went out and bought a case-hardened one. the torque wrench, the cheater bar and the 17mm case-hardened socket snapped the end of the bolt right off. pretty much fed up, i checked the ball joint to make sure that it was still secure (hah) and threw the tire back on.
a couple weeks later (yesterday), with good weather on my side and tired of the erratic steering, i thought i'd give it another shot. twisting it wasn't much of an option anymore. i went through the lubing/heating/beating process again, then decided on the grinder. since one end had already been snapped off i only had to grind off the threaded end. then i used an electric drill to drill off the parts of the bolt that were still holding the ball joint in place inside the holes of the control arm.
this took 4-5 hours yesterday and a couple hours of today. today, the ball joint was removed with a great deal of satisfaction on my part. it was swapped, everything was bolted back together and the erratic steering is mostly gone (there's still a little something, but i think it's because my tires are misaligned -- and nothing quite so obnoxious as the ball joint adjusting your steering for you).
anyway, a couple photos of the removed ball joint are below. after reading most of the archived ball joint posts here, i thought that somebody would appreciate them. :)
posted by 170.215.14...
, Sun, 16 Mar 2003 06:59:17
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