1st time doing ball joints. I started with my passenger side since that was the one making the noise. A couple hiccups along the way, but got it done and all quiet now. Drivers side should go well since the learning curve is done. Ball joint press was a little funky, took a little bit but got it working. Feels good to accomplish that. I had to replace my brake line, it got twisted and broke. Thing was just waiting to snap I think. New brake line, brakes bled, ball joint replaced, all were the first time experiences in that for me. Nice and quiet now, with better pedal pressure thanks to new line. Big day done for me. I'll do drivers side tomorrow, then get after spark plugs in a couple weekends. Oh and had to put a new pcv elbow on too. No big deal, but it was collapsing. Sounded like a flute playing under the hood once in a while. Had a huge hole on the inside of the elbow. Drinking a beer now to celebrate. Hey, where's the beer smilie at???

 

Here, - I had it

 

Did you do the top and bottom? If so, how difficult was the upper control arm to replace and line up?

 

Go figure, the guy with brew in his name Congrats on losing your BJ virginity

 

Just bottom one today. I followed this guide as my instructions.
ball joint instructions

I want more BJ's!!!

 

Thanks for the link. We could all use some more BJ's... unless you're a Chevy driver... then you'd want more driveshaft.

 

The upper ones are quite easy to do.

You can tap loose the BJ from the knuckle or rent a separator. The pickle forks are good if you don't plan to use the part again. They are notorious for tearing the boots.

 

I'd rather deal with BJ's than the shaft, that's for sure.

 

If you lube the sides of the pickle fork and the BJ boot it wont tear, just a trick I've learned over the years, we use it at our shop works like a charm.

 

Well, I attempted the link several times and got this, I even chopped it and got this lol -
Someones ^^^^ Geekified Humor I expect...

I google searched it, found it, - still didn't work
Maybe the sites down @ the Ford Trucks site ?

Can you guys get it to work?

 

Site's down.

 

Thanks.

 

Driver's side now, but I can't get the axle to slide in to allow the knuckle to come down. I've put a jack under the control arm, gone from up, to level, to bottom out to try to get the axle to budge to no avail. I've used pb blaster to try to lubricate it, but the splines just seem to be stuck in the hub. Pounding with my hammer into a block of wood to the axle nut to no avail. I don't have the 12 pt sockets for the inner axle flange, and that looks like more work. Any other ideas?? This was supposed to be the easy side.....

 

Never mind, found the right tool



All done now. Enough crawling around on the concrete for 1 weekend.

 

btw, link is working now for those instructions.