...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.
