Am I alone in finding the process of levering the ball joint shafts out of the uprights  a real struggle?

 

(I had no problem at all removing the the pinch bolt or ARB fitting)

 

As part of my recent engine replacement I had to do this to remove the driveshafts more than once and whilst I managed it by sheer brute force and trial and error I ended up none the wiser as to how to do it more easily in future. 

 

The Haynes manual just says:  

 

"carefully lever down the lower arm to free the balljoint from the swivel hub clamp"

 

but I could only get the balljoint shaft about half-way out and then any amount of feverish levering and jiggling seemed to do no good at all until somehow they eventually came out.

 

Now I was trying to lever between the wishbone and the upright just inboard of the balljoint, which seemed to me the only sensible place.

 

There must surely be a reliable and quick way of doing this?  I spent literally hours struggling with this supposedly trivial task.  

Stick a long bar over the wishbone and under the subframe and jump up and down on it.

Edited 23 January, 201412 yr by StevesTruck

It's all a question of leverage... They do get quite tight sometimes but I agree with the above, a long pry bar or even a trolley jack handle, there's a nice little nook where there is a gap where the tie rods come through to use, either that or just use a mechanical ball joint splitter.

It's all a question of leverage... They do get quite tight sometimes but I agree with the above, a long pry bar or even a trolley jack handle, there's a nice little nook where there is a gap where the tie rods come through to use, either that or just use a mechanical ball joint splitter.

 

What kind of mechanical splitter would that be? The only ones I've seen are for conventional ball joints (like the track rod ends on a Felicia) where they act on the end of the tapered shaft where the nut goes.

next time you are planning to take them out, i'll come over to the ranch and show you how it's done.

It can also be worth sticking a big flat screwdriver in the gap in the pinch and giving it a rattle to free it off.

It's not really about force on the bar, more shocking it.

Not really a problem with the ball joint shaft sticking in the pinch..just getting the wishbone low enough to separate. But clearly I've been levering against the upright when I should have been levering against the chassis if I understand the posts?

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Once i removed the screw from the clamp, mine dropped straight out.

I have the another one to do this week, hope it complies!

No it didn't comply, yes it is a swine.

I will be buying a balljoint splitter tomorrow!

The job is much easier with this

Edited 30 January, 201412 yr by ClarkE_123