Thread: Steering knuckle seperation - breaking the ball joints bond

Just finished doing the ball joints on the wife's D2 yesterday. Definitely not the easiest ball joints I've done over the years, and likely the hardest.
25mm pickle fork, a couple of cycles of heat on the threaded end of the balljoint, old aircraft rivet gun (pneumatic hammer) was what it took to get one of the lowers separated on mine.
Removing the balljoints themselves wasn't easy either. A big-ass C-clamp tool Like THIS, some heat, socket and long bar and a lump hammer.
Remove the upper one first.

Fit the lower one first, then the upper.
Lower was freezer, heat, big-ass C clamp thingy and hammer.
Upper went in with just a hammer after being in the freezer overnight and about 100deg heat on the housing.

I also used a bit of nickel anti-sieze when fitting them as the last thing I wanted was the stuck half way in situation.
Damn glad its over.

Steve

You blokes aren't using big enough hammers...

Originally Posted by justinc

You blokes aren't using big enough hammers...

Absolutely. I've put in a request to the financial controller.
.......for a hoist so I've got room to swing a bigger hammer

Steve

Thanks all for the advise and guidance. Managed to break the taper by swinging a 4.5kg sledge hammer to hit two 4lb mallets that were held on either side of the taper by a second person like anvils. Took a few swings but all four eventually gave in.

IMG_4559.jpg

I then used my Powerbuilt press kit to remove and fit the ball joints. Ideally a larger C part of the clamp would have made it easier. Pushing the old ball joints out was the easy part. New ones in are made difficulty by some of the odd shape of the end of the axels tubes/diff assembly. A few pics for my own future reference if I ever need to do it again (I took these when I did the first side to save time scratching through and measuring the various spacers for the second time - they're in order of the setups for removing lower, removing upper, fitting upper, fitting lower):

IMG_0882.jpgIMG_4653.jpgIMG_1560.jpgIMG_9712.jpgIMG_6709.jpg

See....a bigger hammer is all that is required 😎😎😎😄😄😄

There used to be a clip by 'Swearing and skinned knuckles' on Youtube specifically for the D2.

Can't find the clip anymore. Bit of a shame as it did a step by step walk through of the whole job from start to finish.

Cheers,

Jason