The lower ball joints on my '94 pickup are in bad shape, so I ordered a new pair of them today, and plan on throwing them in next week. I looked in the FSM and did a YotaTech search on ball joint replacement. Here's my plan of action:

1) Spray all bolts with penerating oil the night before
2) Reomove front wheel
3) Remove lower castle nut
4) Remove 4 bolts holding ball joint to steering knuckle
5) Remove lower shock mount bolt
6) Using a bottle jack placed between upper and lower A-arms, spread arms slightly to assist in romoval of ball joint from lower mount
7) Use a pickle fork to pry ball joint out
8) Replace with new ball joint and reassemble
9) Repeat on other side
10) Alignment!

Does it sound like I'm on the right track here? I saw in the FSM that it says to torque to castle nut to 105 ft./lbs. and I was wondering if this is really necessary, or if I can just torque it down really tight? My 3/8" drive torque wrench recently took a dump on me and I'm not interested in spending $100+ on a new one right now. Thanks in adavance!

-Matt

 

Anyone?

 

A BFH will come in very handy. Good luck.

 

use a big 1/2 inch breaker bar or ratchet to get it tight enough to where it wont back out of the spindle but not too tight to where the cotter pin doesnt keep the the nut in place and allow it to back out....