I'm soooo close to finishing up the front end refresh on my '98 4Runner, but the upper ball joints have been the bane of my existence!!

I'm pressing the new upper BJ's in via CajunTaco's method of using a modified pitman arm puller, as a pusher.

The BJ looks to be fully seated into the spindle, and the pitman arm puller is actually beginning to bend the 'ears' of the spindle adjacent to the UBJ hole. The snap ring will seat into half of the circumference of the UBJ groove, but the other sides next to the ears will not.

I cannot apply any more force to the puller, as the tip is eating into my 'pushing pad' and bending the metal.

I'm tempted to just leave it as is, tighten the castle nut to spec, and forget about it.

What would y'all do??

 

Is the ball joint sitting flat? When I pressed mine in they didn't sit flat infill I cleaned the mounting suffice.

 

Maybe 1/32" off from truly flat...but then again that could be coming from the ears being bent.

While the BJ was being pressed it looked very good, straight all around. I stopped many times to make sure that it was as striaght as possible.

I'm thinking about picking up a 3-jaw press and seeing if changing the mounting points from two large ones with the modified pitman arm puller, to three small ones, will make a difference.