Woodruff, Jason P said:
>
> There's probably a good FAQ somewhere, but here's what I remember when I
> had to drill out the bumpstops.
> Pull the front wheel, pull the caliper (7mm allen required!), pull the
> rotor, pull the shock.
>
> Insert spring compressor, squeeze until the spring is a little loose in
> the pocket.
>
> Wedge the ball joint separator fork between the knuckle and lower
> control arm. Bang with hammer much harder and much longer than you
> expected, it'll pop loose eventually. Pull coil spring. At some point
> separate the upper ball joint in the same manner. Unbolt the control
> arm to frame bolts (Large Torx sockets required!), remove control arms.
If you support the lower control arms with trans jacks (or support the
vehicle on jacks under them if you don't have access to a lift) and just
seperate the control arms from the spindle, you don't have to remove the
shock, spring, or any of the control arms. It's much less work, I was able
to replace all 4 joints this way in about 4 hours.
> Use a corded drill and healthy drill bit to drill out all the rivets (3
> per ball joint?). Use the highest quality hardware (nuts and bolts) you
> can get to install the new ball joints.
I used an air-hammer with a wide flat bit shave the heads off of the rivets.
They're much softer than the control arms are so you don't have to worry
about damaging the arm in the process. On my 2wd, the upper joint is mounted
above the arm, I shaved the rivets off of the bottom of the arm and used the
air hammer to pop it off of the top as one unit. The bottom is a little more
difficult, the joint is sandwiched between two pieces of metal. It was
easiest to shave the tops of the rivets and then use a punch to drive them
out the bottom. The joints slid right out then. The upper joints are held
on by 3 rivets and the lowers by 4. (My truck is a 2000, there may be some
difference between the two years)
The joints I purchased (DANA) came with all the hardware. They use grade 8
bolts and locknuts. If you look at the locknuts, the threads start out round
and end up oval at the top, once you put them on there they're NOT coming off
easy. I wouldn't recommend using anything else besides the hardware that
comes with the joints you buy, it comes along with it for a reason. It's
still plenty easy to remove should you have to replace the joint again in the
future.
-- - Josh www.omg-stfu.com
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