Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi, my name is Nate McCullough on behalf of Expert Village. In the following clips we
are going to talk about the correct procedure for replacing your upper and lower ball joints
on a 2-wheel drive full size vehicle. In this clip, we're going to talk about the actual
procedure used for pressing in your new ball joint. I have my half-inch drive ratchet with
a seven-eighths socket. The ball joint press itself has a hex head on it which where you
are going to put your socket at. It's either a seven-eighths or a thirteenth-sixteenth.
Those are the only one's that they have on the market. I'm going to take my socket and
stick it on there and tighten the screw down. You may need to use a cheater pipe. I have
one here handy. Right here, just a chunk of pipe. I'm going to slip on the handle. What
that's going to give me is the mechanical advantage over this stubby handle. Just due to the style of vehicle you may be
working on, you may have to do some pressing and change your cup configuration. I'll go
over that with you here shortly. What we're going to do is run the ball joint down until
it's tight. When it's tight, I'm going to release my drive screw and check and see if
I can actually get my snap ring on the ball joint itself. There we are good and tight.
You break it loose. As you can see my ball joint in not pressed entirely through the
hole, we?re going to have to change our configuration slightly to continue squeezing the ball joint
into the location it's going to need to be in. As you can see, I changed my ball joint
driving configuration slightly. What I did was take my cup from the bottom and moved
it to the top. Depending on how much room you have when you're pressing in your new
ball joint, you may have to switch it back and forth. These clamps come in various different
sizes. The particular one we had only had enough throw to get it started and then we
would have to switch it and drive it through. The larger one are, of course, more expensive
and your parts store may not carry it. The kits are designed to be extremely universal,
so if you put the kit together correctly, you can do any ball joint on the market. I've
got my configuration changed. I'm going to take my ratchet and put it back on the drive
screw, my cheater pipe and finish pressing my ball joint in place. All right. And that
is proper way to seat your ball joint. What I'm going to do is loosen up my clamp and
get it out of the way.
As you can see, my ball joint is pushed all the way through. You can actually take and
look and see the groove that our snap ring seats in. You can take and feel it underneath
at shoulder and make sure that there is no gap. We don't have one. That's the proper
way to press in your new ball joint.