I'm having trouble removing the lower ball joints on my Tacoma. I've tried a combination of beating, heating, Blaster, and a claw-type puller, all to no avail. I even put enough torque on the claw-type puller that I had to wrap a big hose clamp around the 3 claws and tighten it to hold it on the spindle. It stayed on longer, but eventually came off. There's not much spindle for it to grab ahold of without accidentally grabbing the ball joint itself.

And yes, I did remove the snap rings.

Is there a different tool I can use that won't require removal of the whole A-arm and taking it to work, where I have access to a press? And will I need the press to re-install them?

And will the uppers be as hard?

I'm almost at the point of using my Dremel tool to cut it out. And I don't want to have to replace the A-arms with new ones that have ball joints already installed. I already bought Moog ball joints, I don't want to return them, and the better quality A-arms are way too expensive.

Thanks, William.

 

Sounds like you need to borrow a ball joint press kit from a local parts store. It's like a huge c clamp.

 

Thanks.

 

Borrowed the press from Autozone. They closest adapter I found was about 3 mm too small. So I had to "borrow" one part of a 2 inch 3-piece pipe union from work and use my Dremel tool to open up the inner diameter to fit. It worked fine.

Thanks for the advice.

 

Welcome.