ball joint spacer install
 

Hi everyone, Im new to this forum and have been looking through it day and night. I think its a great forum. Anyway, I have noticed that many people in here seem to take a liking to the bj spacers to get a little lift in the front. I am highly interested in doing this to my 94 4x4 pickup. I don't have any tools to cut the uca and called my 4wheel shop here to see if they could install it for me. They had no idea what it was, along with every other suspension shop, and said they wouldn't do it. I read on another thread about shaving the spacer to fit, instead of cutting the uca. It got no responses and I was wondering if that would be possible to have a shop grind down the spacer, so I could install it myself. Thanks for the help. Sorry for the long post.

You can rent a grinder cheap. No need to buy if you won't need it.

I remember reading about that a while back also (shaving the spacer), but don't remember who.

I would definitely rather cut the spacer, than the uca. Would that be ok?

I ground out the UCA a bit to make mine work. When you do this, you're not really getting rid of anything structural, you're just enlarging the opeing that's already there. I would go that route rather than shaving the spacer.

You should be able to rent a grinder pretty cheap from an equipment rental place, but why not buy a cheap one and then you have it for next time you need it? You will need it some other time, and you'll be glad you have it sitting around.

I looked at shaving the spacer when I did mine but you would end up taking too much off & ruining the integrety of it. I ground down my UCA instead. You can get a grinder for $20. Well worth the investment. I use mine all the time to cut off ald rusy bolts, etc.

Thanks for the input. Is it that easy to do it yourself? I have little mechanical skills and tools. It seems pretty straight forward, but I am afraid of messing anything up like the shafts, and having problems with binding like some other guy on the forum did. How hard is it really, for someone with little experience and tools? Thanks everyone, appreciate the help.

Don't worry about the binding - that was the only case I have ever heard of. It is fairly easy to do. follow the instructions & just be carful not to pull your cv shaft apart. other than that it was pretty easy. You will need an alighnment after - it will look like Daffy Duck & be really squirly on the road until you get it aligned

i had never used a grinder for anything before and when i installed my bj spacers i rented one and easily ground down the UCA. all you have to do is put the spacer where its supposed to go and see how much you have to take off. the whole job took a few hours, not a big deal. and everyone on the board is always here to help if you get stuck halfway through the job!! :welder:

The grinding is the easy part, finding out how to raise the uca high enough was the hard part for me. I would definately buy a grinder rather than rent one, you will be surprised how much you use it. One tip if you get a 4.5 in. grinder, go ahead and use a 4 in. cutting wheel. I have a 4.5 in. grinder and used the 4.5 in. wheel and the first side was real tight getting it in there. The next side was easier because the wheel had worn down a little bit.

I am the one that had the binding problem. I am still not sure what the problem was, but once I had it aligned it fixed the problem. Something was way off on my driverside and the whole wheel was closer to the diff. than it was supposed to be, causing the angle to be greater than it should have been. It wasn't drooping any further than the pass. side, just the angle was greater for some reason. Anyways, I am completely happy with them and have had them offroad about every weekend since. Also, having all the help from everyone here was awesome. I also know a little more about my front end, which is always helpful.

Thanks everyone this is really helpful to me and I am grateful for the input. I went to my auto shop today and looked at buying a tool to do the trimming. The install suggests an angle grinder or cut off wheel to do this. What would be better, or is there no advantage of one over the other. The angle ginder was $20 and the cutting wheel was $40. I don't mind spending the extra money if the cutting wheel would be that much more worth it, or is it not? Thanks again.

i picked up a $30 Ryobi 4" angle grinder when i installed mine. i have used it more times then i thought i would ever would when i bought it.. well worht the 30 bucks i spent.

With such a great solution to cranking T bars for a little lift, why are the spacers not a common thing? THe shops here in HI had no idea what they were, is it just this state or are they not common at all. One more quest. Would installing the spacers to obtain a 15" rim/fender limit cause the same increased angles on all suspension parts, such as the cv joints, as cranking the T bars to a 15" limit, or would does it not work out that way.

Yep. Inside of CV is still attached to the frame and outside of the CV is still attached to the wheel.

They were developed by some guys on 4x4Wire (and YotaTech) in the summer of '03. Basically not many people outside of these two message boards are all that familiar with them. Click here for the original, and ultimate, ball joint spacer thread from 4x4Wire.

anybody got pics. of where the BJ spacers go???

I'll second that!! I used my bottle jack but it took a little while to figure out where to shoe horn it in there.

A grinding wheel shouldn't be $40! :eeek: That's more like a diamond tipped masonry blade. Check out this link. This is similar to what you want to buy http://www.grainger.com/Grainger/wwg...691624&ccitem=

Here ya go

Pics start at post #17
https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f31/bj-spacer-question-58081/
and here's a link to another set of pics
http://sonoransteel.com/san_diego_of...olutions_.html

did you go to maui offroad for the work. There's a couple better guys down there that do thier own work. And know what they are doing.

I actually called maui off road, and 4wheel parts on Oahu. Who would you recommend?

i may get a set of 1" spacers, and then back of the torsion bar for 1 inch less to retain my current height, i have a 3 inch rancho lift n heavy duty tb