- This topic has 8 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 12 months ago by
.
- Topic
I was replacing a ball joint on my 2001 Mazda Protege last night. It’s held to the steering knuckle by a pinch bolt. It’s not a tapered/castle nut dealio. I was kinda expecting the ball joint to drop out of the knuckle without too much difficulty after I removed that pinch bolt. Boy was I wrong…
It wasn’t seized or anything. I could move the control arm every which way. I just couldn’t get the shaft of the ball joint to drop out of that pinch. I guess maybe the top of it mushroomed a bit..? I don’t have a ball joint separator. What I ended up doing was spraying the crap out of the area with MOOVIT and hammering a fat chisel in there to spread the pinch fingers. Then I was able to whack the control arm to get it to drop.
It just seems really crude but at the time I was very cold and tired. So now I’m wondering what the “professional” way to do that is. Or do you actually have to hammer on the pinch fingers to get them to spread?
Heh, and I was expecting this job to be super quick and easy… It didn’t help that my girlfriend yelling at me to get off the wet ground and get inside was only causing me to get more stubborn 😳
- Replies
this was the best I could find.
One of the GM cars is like that and I believe it’s the G6/Malibu’s. The ball joints are sold as a control arm assembly on those but I have ran into this before. I believe I was putting the cradle back in after a transmission repair. Had it all bolted in and couldn’t get the damn ball joints into the steering knuckle… it was SO close, they were over the knuckle and pivoting every way but couldn’t get enough room to get it straight enough to go through the hole. I believe I ended up just loosening the cradle bolts off a few turns and they went right in. But if I was just changing a ball joint and hadn’t had the cradle unbolted I would have loosened the control arm bolts off a bit, that should give you that extra little bit to make life easier.
Yeah the book mentioned prying them apart but there’s nothing really to grab on. The knuckle doesn’t have much of a flat bottom and goes into a rounded edge right away so the pry bar just slips off. Plus this would have needed crazy leverage to get them to separate. Plus I think the guy on fixya.com was talking about a slightly different setup as its a whole assembly like what Shaun_300 is talking about.
Everything was lining up well and I had room to work with I just couldn’t get that darn thing to pop out of the knuckle. I could wiggle the ball joint up and down in the knuckle I just couldn’t get the top of it to clear out of the pinch.
I’m just thinking that if I did the method I used last night around someone experienced I’d get a “What the hell are you doing???” response. I like to do things the proper way and avoid backyard methods.
if your trying to get the ball joint stud out of the knuckle. I would spray some lube on it. I sometimes use a chisel in the split near were the bolt goes. Tap it in to the slot. Use a pry bar to push the control arm down and tap with a hammer. WEAR GLASSES
Okay so no matter what expect ball joints to give you a bit of a headache? I’ve heard horror stories about them but I thought those mainly pertained to tapered ones and trying to press them out of the control arm.
I also had plenty fun trying to get the vertical bushing to line up with its hole on the install. It kept teasing me. I could get the bolt through the bushing and into the hole but it was on just a bit of an angle and I couldn’t get any threads started. I guess you can read as many books and forums as you want but nothing makes up for actual experience… heh
Thanks to all for their advice and suggestions. It’s a huge help when you’re kinda on your own.
Here is what you need to do. Go to http://www.autozone.com
Register for free and you will have access to repair tips for your particular vehicle. Also the correct tools and parts that you will need.
Best of luck
Hey, another question while I’m here. I read on another forum someone say that for the bolts going through the bushings of the control arm you should only snug them and then only torque them down once there is a load on the axle. As in the car resting on ramps or something. And that if you torque the bolts with no load on the suspension you’ll mess up the bushings.
Is there any truth to this? I didn’t read anything about that in either my haynes or factory service manual.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.