Rear Ball Joints Removal

[Peter C]

Hello, I am stumped as to how to remove the rear ball joints. I have manged to replace all the front Ball joints and bushes and have bought all the parts for the rear. Problem is I cannot swing a wrench at the rear, seems like i have not enough space no matter how high I jack up the rear. Any suggestions aand recommendations will be appreciated

[kiwi1973]

I'd like to help with this, as I have just replaced a rear upper ball joint on mine (and I presume this is what you are referring to since there is only the one ball joint each side in the rear). I can't however relate to the issue you're experiencing and some more description may be needed. When I did mine I encountered no difficulties - was a quick and easy job. Can you be more precise, or attach a picture of the issue perhaps.

[GHendo]

Hi Peter

As Kiwi said, I’m not too sure what the problem is you are having and maybe a photo will help. I did this job a while ago now, but don’t remember much in the way of trouble except for popping the ball joint from the knuckle – I heated the knuckle with the oxy around the area where the ball joint connects then hit the side of the knuckle with a decent hammer. Undoing the castle nuts from the ball joint can usually be achieved easily enough with a spanner or socket.

Your heading is “Rear Ball Joint Removal” however I notice you also mention “bushes” in your post – is it the bushes you are having trouble with?

Cheers

Geoff

[Peter C]

Hello all,

I guess what I have been having problems with is loosening the Nuts holding the Ball joints in place. I cannot seem to get a spanner in to loosen the upper Ball joint.
There is another on the Toe control arm that I too would like to replace, as well as replacing the Trailing arm while I am in there.

I have a schematic to show what sequence items are to be loosened, but still cannot fit spanners anywhere.

Am I doing something wrong?

[GHendo]

Peter I presume you mean the two nuts that hold the Ball Joint and Toe Control Arm to the Knuckle – the ball joint also has two bolts that attach it’s other end to the wishbone-shaped Upper Arm. For a start I assume you have removed the tyre and wheel so you have a bit more room to move. I can’t remember exactly how I did this on mine when I removed the knuckles to install new bearings, however I seem to remember these nuts were pretty tight. First I would have probably tried a socket with a breaker bar – if you haven’t got a breaker bar, go and buy a couple – they come in different lengths. I have an old backhoe I sometimes have to work on (more times than I’d like) and the breaker bar I use on it is a great big long bugger that takes ¾” sockets – I find it talks to most tight nuts and bolts. If you can’t get a socket on the nut, find out the exact size of the nut (it will be metric of course) and go buy a really long ring spanner – about 600mm. long – this is another part of my ‘backhoe’ tool kit. You only need to ‘break’ the first bit of the nut to get it started and the rest is easy.

Good luck and don’t knock too much skin off your knuckles.

Geoff

[kiwi1973]

Sometimes there just isn't enough room to get a spanner in there and, similar to as Geoff described, I used a socket on a breaker bar to at least do the initial 'cracking' of the nuts from ball joint to the upper control arm.

Conversely, there isn't sufficient room around the ball joint nut to get a socket in there (at least not with the driveshaft in place and you don't want to have to remove that if it can be avoided), so I used a 24mm spanner on that.

Over time I've ended up adding to my basic socket and spanner sets by buying tools initially specifically needed just to do a particular job, but if you intend to work on your own vehicle in the future you end up using these tools again and again and get ample value from them. Usually justifying the spend on tools is easy, since given the savings available from doing your own work you typically recover the full cost of the tool from using it the very first time - few expenditures in life have such a short 'payback period'.

One tool that I find indispensable now for doing ball joints is a ball joint splitter - not the pitchfork type, but the type that has a bolt that tightens to pop the ball joint out. Yes, it is possible to get a ball joint to release just with whacking with a heavy hammer, but I hate that. I watched mechanics in Morocco do that to my car and whilst eventually they got the ball joint out they'd managed to damage other stuff with imprecise hammer blows.