Ever have one of those times when if only you could have taken a step back with a job and said "yeah, nah, I'll get a mechanic to do that." Well, changing the front upper and lower ball joints fits right into that category. Yesterday afternoon, in a fit of stupidity, I decided to have a go at replacing them. Armed with a few YouTube video's tucked underneath my arm, I felt confident of tackling the job with a minimum of fuss.
Well. YouTube video's sometimes don't show the warts and all of a project. They don't show what happens when things go awry, like they did here.
I was certain the removal of the upper ball joint was not a traumatic undertaking. I was led to believe the spring tension would not play a part in the removal of the joint. I was wrong.
Dead wrong. Well, I could have been dead if the spring had gotten free of its mooring, like it was wanting to do during the course of this activity.
But, as young Willy said once "all's well that ends well" and today (after seven hours of wrestling with it) finally overcame the issues and fitted both ball joints up.
The issue I think was the truck had no weight, no engine and when the ball joint was separated the spring just went kapow and the whole lower section of the spring housing dropped about 30 cm almost spilling the spring free. What followed was several hours of figuring out how to get everything together again while at the same time not breaking anything.
The trolley jack was not big enough to raise the truck to a sufficient height, and when it did, the whole truck went with it. I tried putting wood blocks to raise the jack's height, but that didn't work. I tried spring compressing jacks but they were of no help, either as I couldn't get access to the springs with the ones I had. I decided to setup the engine crane and tried to raise the front end via chains through the lower shock absorber shackle, but that did not work as the angle of chains forced the hub in the wrong direction. It became problematic, too, as the chains were always trying their best to damage the brand new wheel hub.
In the end, it was left up to the crane and the placement of the chain to the outer side of the same shackle allowing the free movement of the hub while I raised the crane and from there was able to feed the ball joint into the hub.
Mamma Mia!
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