beotch smile.gif went to get the front end aligned and had a bad lower left ball joint and tie rod ends gettin that way,,,glad I found out in a shop and not doing 100+ down the track :eek: tie rod ends were a piece of cake,ball joint broke loose easily since I just replace the springs not long ago,,,had a guy tell me that I could press the ball joint back in with a bottle jack and a little tapping on the control arm with a hammer,,,wrong,,,gotta go rent a installer tomorrow,,,got it within 1/8" of seating,,,those things fit tight,but I guess they make the new ones slightly larger to keep the tight press in fit.

Robert, I'm in the middle of a complete front end rebuild right now. Since I was worried about damaging the control arms trying to beat the bushings in, I took my control arms to a local brake supply shop to have the bushings and ball joints pressed. As of closing this evening, they only have one of the lower control arm done, and using their 20T Hydraulic press, it gave them them fits.

I used one of the C clamp shaped installation tools with the arm on the car. Took a while of cranking, but it did the job. I had to use a cheater bar at the end. I remember beating them in back in the day, but I don' think I'd try that now.

I just did all my arms. We used a 20 ton press for to get it all out, and we used a c clamp press with an impact wrench to get the ball joints in. took 2 seconds.

I used the Harbor Freight Ball Joint service kit. The ball joints went in with some effort, but it was a nice tight fit.

I rented the c clamp tool from Oreilly auto parts,its amazing how easy that pressed the rest the way in with just a half inch ratchet. The upper was a little stubborn,ground off the rivets then drilled em and got them off...now the passenger side tomorrow...the lower on the drivers side was real loose,upper was almost as tight as a new one...they must not have much strain on them...car has 140,000 miles on it.