Well I've spent the last day and a half on replacing my ball joints, I've got them all off except one. I rented a heavy duty press from a tool rental place and the first 3 came off without too much trouble, but then I got to the passenger side lower one. I have broken 2 sockets and just broke my Craftsman 1/2" drive wrench since I've been tightening the press so much with a 3 foot breaker bar. I also believe im actually beginning to to bend the actual press itself, this isn't even some made in China crap, its a brand name ball joint service kit.

I even took a picture to show you im not crazy.



I dont know if anyone here has had this problem before but I didnt know it could be that hard to get something off, I mean there has to be 1000's of pounds of force on it, and after being heated and oiled it still wont budge at all.

I'm considering if I cant get it off instead of bringing it to one of my local ripoff engineers (mechanics) to have them remove it, just swapping in a High Pinion front axle, as it would actually probobly be cheaper than paying someone to press it out for me, and if I cant press it out with professional tool, how is a shop going to?

Well if anyone has any ideas i'd love to hear them, if not my XJ is sitting in the garage a month or so until I can afford to scavenge a HP D-30 from the junkyard.

Judging by your picture .... you are pressing the wrong way.



You should be pushing the lower balljoint down, towards the ground. And your picture shows you are trying to push the balljoint up.



Joe

dang. there ya go problem solved

Yeah, I realized that right after I got back out, I feel like such an idiot, at least craftsman tools have a lifetime warranty so I didn't lose any money to my not thinking.

So now ya know hopefully helps someone else from doing the same.. Its all good learn from yer mistakes.. We all do that sometimes

What if you don't make mistakes ?





Joe

Just curious, you were not able to press the D side L out backwards, were you?

i got a question for u dude. my ball joints are a jacked up, now im not a full blown mechanic but ive fixed everything on my jeep and i can garage fabricate almost anything. so scale of 1 to 10 how hard is doin' the ball joints?

Difficulty:3 PITA:7

awsome, i wanna do this pretty soon so i was just curios what im getting myself into ya know.