Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting front ball joint removal?

i've posted and i see nothing specific on how to get that thing out of the spindle/clamp.

i'm changing the front right wheel bearing. I have everything off of the spindle except the ball joint, axel (of course) and the strut.

if i pry the control arm down the ball joint "nipple" comes out of the clamp to the point of where that channel/ridge is. then the remaining part at the top is stuck FAST in there.

i've tried jacking up the suspension and prying with a big screwdriver.

i've read that it may help to loosen up the strut bearing nut at the top of the strut. any comments?

do i need one of those ball joint fork removal thingies? my feeling is that it won't get all the way in there or will damage the ball joint boot.

i had it almost all the way out after an hour and got stuck here. argh.

thanks for any help/comments

the strut replacement HOWTO on the mods page says to loosen the strut top bolt and use a BIG skrew driver or pry bar between the spindle/nuckle and the control arm while pushing down on the control arm with your foot.

i guess i'm gonna need a bigger (boat) pry bar.

i'll reply when i get the b!tch off.

Maybe it's just me, but if you take the normal step of using strut spring compressors before you start you should not have a problem with arm travel. Many places will let you borrow these with a returnable deposit.

i own spring compressors and i didn't even think about it.
how is that a "normal step"?
i've never compressed a strut prior to taking it out of a car. i've done suspension on lots of cars too, focus, vw, audi, honda. just never on this one.
good idea though.

i loosened the top nut and got two honking pry bars in there and popped it out. the spindle is off now and having the bearing pressed in.

should i just take the strut out to get the spindle back onto it? it wasn't easy to get her off of there. several hard hammer blows...

thanks for the help!

I'm jealous. I've given up on getting that ball joint off of there. I'm taking it into a mechanic

...i thought getting that crap off of there was hard... getting it back on was twice the PITA. good god.

the a-arm/control arm doesn't drop down low enough to get under the strut and the strut is hard to compress by hand, obvoiusly. putting a jack under it just pushes it out toward the fender so does no good at all.

i ended up using spring compressors while the strut was on the car (another huge PITA, since you can only compress the lowest two coils if you are lucky and/or have a 22mm stubby wrench, and even then it takes 20 mins or so just to compress the spring a little), and then the big honking pry bar.
i got a set of them from autozone. orange/red handles angled machined 30degree tips, square shaft. cheap as hell and bend when you don't want them to.

i put the pry bar end just over the rivet for the ball joint (the one in front), the shaft under the lower brake pad carrier mounting nipple (toward the front side of the spindle) then as i got closer i sort of shifted the tip of the pry bar to just behind the ball joint itself (pry bar is now close to vertical to try and lever the spindle back IN toward the ball joint), got all the angles right, pulled up carefully so it wouldn't slip (which it did at least 25 times), while simultaneously pushing against the hub inward and finally it went. it wasn't too happy about it. but it went. i had to wiggle and shake that crap in there.
after all that i discovered that i had ripped my ball joint boot and it sounds like one of my CVs is bad....
how annoying. prolly from all the pushing and turning and grunting i had to do against the drive shaft.

seriously. everyone glosses over this point, "remove ball joint from spindle by prying down on control arm. installation is the opposite of removal" my A$$.

this had to be one of the THE most annoying jobs i've done on this car, and i've done some annoying stuff.
what's the trick? anyone? anyone?
cuz, it looks like i'm going back in to replace the ball joint and the inner CV.
of course, since i'm removing the ball joint altogether it should be a lot easier.

My "trick" was to replace the lower control arm at the same time replacing the bearings. Once you take out the control arm bushing bolts( the front bolts needs to be loosed then cut out with sawzall ) and the half shaft pressed out( with a hub puller tools kit ) of the knuckle, the knuckle and the arm can be easily pulled out together and then separated off of car.

You can see my posting under the 'suspension' forum talking about the wheel bearing replacement. It worked for me and hopefully for others as well.

With new arms there was more flexibility to deflect the arm downward so install was not as PITA. I used 2 x 2 lumber about 3ft long to leverage the arm down.

where did you apply the lever to deflect the arm down?

am i to understand that the new A-arms have a different design which does not contact the frame rail near the pivot as "early" in its downward swing?

any idea when these arms were first produced? my car is a 98. forget the build date... late '97.

i got it done. there is no way i'd buy a new control arm (~$200 right?) for a <$100 bearing swap.
same goes for ball joints.
of course if one is changing ball joints it should eliminate the geometry problems as well.

Here's what I had to do:

I was replacing my ball joints with the updated re-greasable joints from Bill Jenkins, which BOLT up into the place of the old ball joints (the old ones used rivets). You must drill out the rivets that hold the old joints to the control arm which leaves the holes for the new ball joint to bolt to.

Once the old ball joints were off, I installed the new ball joints into the bottom of the hub, THEN bolted the ball joint to the control arm. Thats the only way those suckers were going back together.