I completed the upper ball joints on my 95 dakota 4x4 and will
probably do the lowers next because they are also near the end of
their serviceable life. It might have been easier to do uppers and
lowers in one job but I wanted to minimize down time and keep the work
to an amount I can reasonably complete in a day (yesterday I took 3-4
hrs for the passenger side upper ball joint).
The shop manual is a little vague on how to handle the lowers on a
4x4. They show how to do it on a 2wd but the configuration is
different on a 4wd, the ball stud is facing down instead of up.
First, I assume I'll have to relieve the torsion bar. For the ball
joint, one way to do it is to take the whole lower control arm off and
press out the ball joint on a shop press. Is there a way to do it
without removing the LCA? Is it possible to leave the axle shaft in
when doing the lowers or am I going to want to take it out anyhow just
to have room? Finally I assume I would need an alignment after doing
this (unlike the uppers which are thread-in).
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