Bottom balljoint ( steering swivel)

Post by **Defender110** » Sun Jan 23, 2011 12:18 am

Yes understood now, I've undone this ball joint many times when doing CV boots but had forgotten it was (upside down) attached to the leg / hub carrier.

I've reached that age where when I upload new information into the old memory banks I first have to delete other information stored in there

Now what was it we were talking about

citronut · Post by **citronut** » Sun Jan 23, 2011 10:38 am

rmattila
"http://www.rmattila.com/images/remontit ... l_auki.jpg"

very impresive tool you have there, and i like the multi tasking,

as i probably use an assistant to hold the bar,

if doing this job with hub still attatched to the leg/strut you have to mind you dont pull the O/S drive shaft appart if the hub rotates too far,

this is why the need for that supperb tool,

regards malcolm

tim · Post by **tim** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 6:42 pm

I just did my balljoint and it went OK, I'd make a couple of points though. The hub holding tool is very neat but to make one you need a supply of steel, a meaty drill bit and time. As a novice I found a damn sight easier simply to remove the whole hub as you only need to undo the split clamp and detach the caliper, then you can take the whole plot off and clamp it in a vice. I wasn't expecting the joint to shift (maybe not original, 290,000 miles seems a lot... but it had a well-rusted in look) and after lifting the workbench off the ground a couple of times I threw the hub into the red BX, whizzed down to the local garage and ten seconds with an airgun did the job.
The other thing is that when I tried to shift the lower arm away from the ball joint I couldn't shift it far enough. Much sweat and puzzlement. Martin at Pleiades provided the answer, thanks Martin. The wagon needs to be on stands both sides, so both wheels are off the ground, and hydraulics on the lowest setting. Haynes don't tell you that.... then there is enough free movement and no pressure on the strut so you can lift the carrier and balljoint away from the arm easily.
So in fact the only 'special' tool you need to buy is the joint removal spanner.
Out of interest, how much has someone out there been charged by a commercial garage for doing this job?? I just like to keep a tally of how much we save every time we don't pay someone else!

rmattila · Post by **rmattila** » Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:05 pm

tim wrote:The other thing is that when I tried to shift the lower arm away from the ball joint I couldn't shift it far enough. Much sweat and puzzlement. Martin at Pleiades provided the answer, thanks Martin. The wagon needs to be on stands both sides, so both wheels are off the ground, and hydraulics on the lowest setting. Haynes don't tell you that.... then there is enough free movement and no pressure on the strut so you can lift the carrier and balljoint away from the arm easily.

That's what the anti-roll bar does - couple the lower arms together: if there's pressure on one wheel, the anti-roll bar distributes the load with the other side. It's an easy way to hurt oneself: putting load on the lower arm through the anti-roll bar, and then setting it loose!

Haynes says (11*13*1): "raise the vehicle at the front and support it on axle stands". Sometimes, when in hurry, i just lift the entire front end with a hydraulic jack and a jacking bar and see that I don't have anything at risk if the jack would happen to fail. The correct way, however, is absolutely to use the axle stands.

toddao · Post by **toddao** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 5:20 pm

I did the first of my ball-joints today..

I just wanted to add something that hasn't mentioned in this thread. In the Haynes it mentions that once the ball-joint is fitted then it must be bent over in two places into the corresponding recesses in the hub-carrier in order to lock it. However it doesn't advise that these 'bends' must be driven out of the old one before attempting to remove it.

I had a similar scenario to Tim above, I had the hub carrier in the vice and I was practically lifting the work-bench up with the amount of force I was applying with my trusty breaker bar without result. Some head scratching then after cleaning the area I found these 'bends' or tabs concealed within oily muck- I punched them out with a hammer and drift then re-applied the rig and less force than before and out it came.

rmattila · Post by **rmattila** » Thu Mar 03, 2011 5:31 pm

That's true: even though undoing the bends is not absolutely necessary if you have enough force at use (e.g. a 30 mm nut welded fast, with 46 mm hit-wrench and a 2 kg mallet), it sure makes the job a lot easier and "cleaner" exercise. At least hit the bend once or twice so that it will "bite" only after the thread has already started to move: this alone will reduce the required force significantly.