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I’ve just had a massive PITA session replacing the lower balljoints on my 2005 Jeep Liberty.
I’m not in the USA so I don’t have access to any loan-a-tool programs from shops, but I was able to borrow two different balljoint kits from friends, one made by OTC, the other by Performance. The OTC set was their most basic one, so it only had a few different receiver/installer tubes, the Performance kit had slightly more.
It was flat-out impossible to press out the old joints with either tool, since the only receiver tubes that were wide enough were too long – there just wasn’t enough space between the jaws of the clamp for the necessary assemblage of cups and receivers.
What saved me was that I have a cheapie Chinese-made 12-ton floor press. I stood the steering knuckle up in that and pressed the joint out with a 32mm 3/4″ deep socket. After so much screwing around with the balljoint press, hoping I might find a combination of tubes and cups that would fit, it was almost embarrassingly quick and easy to push the joint out with the floor press.
The design of the knuckle made it impossible to use the floor press to install the new joint, but fortunately it was *just* possible to do it with the C-clamp press, but there was only about half a millimeter (literally) of wiggle room once I’d got everything set up ready to go.
The moral being, if I ever have to do this job again, I’ll buy a full-on master balljoint set, with enough cups and receivers to sink a battleship B)
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Been there, done that.
Recently did upper and lower balljoints on a Chevy 2500 HD truck. Had to use the OTC press and master accessory set to do the job, but it was hard. The recommended process was to use a floor press, but I did not have the special tool (loaned it out :angry: ) to remove the torsion bars to get the control arm out.
Cussed and carried on, but I was able to do the job.
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