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Idler and Pitman have been ordered.

Any tips for doing the lower ball joints would be appreciated. I'm assuming: Jack up truck in center at front crossmember, remove wheel, let torsion out of torsion bar, place bottle jack under lower arm, loosen, but do not remove nut holding lower ball joint, seperate, make sure jack is holding arm, remove nut and lower the arm, remove bolts holding in ball joint and replace. Reverse procedure.

Correct?

John B.


I've never done ball joints on a Monty, but done 'em on 2 troopers and a s10.. on both of those it goes something like this:

  • Buy new ball joints
  • Lay out all the tools you will need for the job (check bolt sizes etc in advance so you don't have to get up 300 times)
  • Jack up front of truck at center, remove tires, put jack stand under A-arm, lower truck onto A-arms
  • Remove hub retainer on axle shaft from side you're working on
  • Curse and yell and punch a nearby baby in the face to manage pain from whatever you probably just hurt yourself on
  • Loosen but do not remove lower ball joint castle nut
  • try pounding on spindle up near UCA with a mallet to see if you're lucky enough that it separates
  • When that fails, get out the pickle fork and swear word dictionary, you'll need both
  • Pickle fork the hell out of the ball joint
  • Repeat with top one, you may have to pull axle shaft out of the way
  • Un-bolt the ball joints from the arms (or grind off rivets, if retained that way)
  • USE LOC TITE ON BOLTS WHEN REINSTALLING NEW BJ'S
  • NO SERIOUSLY, USE LOC TITE
  • LOTS OF IT
  • reassembly is reverse of disassembly
  • Get some sleep, because there's a good chance you've been working on this all day by now
  • Get started on the other side, same process
  • Yay now you can get an alignment!


So.. not sure if all the steps are precisely the same on a monty... and if yours came from anywhere rusty you'll want to quadruple the amount of swearing you were prepared for and have a couple rolls of paper towels handy for the blood.