No magic to it. You just have to push hard. I found the best way was to put the ball joint in place first, and then install the strut. The first time I did it, I probably worked 6-8 hours on one knuckle. I finally figured out how to force the control arm downward, with the ball joint in place, so that the strut could be installed. It takes a lot of force. There were a lot of posts in the past talking about it.
On the other hand, if you are putting in a new ball joint, that bolts in place rather than rivets in place, you can loosen the ball joint bolts about 1/2 inch, line everything up, and then tighten the ball joint bolts.
