hey guys, its been a minute. lots of things going on in my life right now and the forums take a back seat for now. Ive got a problem though, the other day i was pulling out of my apartment complex and between going around a turn and driving over a manhole cover i popped a tie rod end. well i got it replaced in about an hour once i found a ride to auto zone. but i was looking and the other three ends, my ball joints are rotted out and my idler, pitman arms are probably shot as well. I have a three day weekend (two really because I'm not working on thE SEC SEASON OPENER BABY WHOOO!!!!!) so I'm gone replace the tie rods and get an alignment so i can get back on the road. would i need any special tools to do the upper ball joints and are there any problems any of y'all have ran into doing this? thanks for the help fellas. look forward to talking to some of you again
whats up joe. yea i figured id need a fork. i asked auto zone when i bought the ends but they were out at the time. ill be sure to rent one when i go to do it
I just did this a couple weeks ago, lucky for you I already did all the cross referencing and this is the best group of parts for the money you can buy. Instead of just replacing upper ball joints, do the whole upper control arm, wayyy easier and also has new everything including the bushings. youll need TWO like 22 or 21 mm sockets or wrenches to undo the bolts. For lower ball joints youll need a ball joint press ( oreillys loans thems for free, you put a deposit and get it back once its returned. youll need snap ring pliers or just use a stright blade screw driver to pry off the snap ring ( either works) and then the ball joint press. Tie rods are self explanatory , Measure the previous tie rod length and count the threads and get the new setup as close as you can. Any questions lemme know or post on here, lots have done this and I believe Josh made a thread on it also If they dont have a fork you can rent or if you dont own one, the ball joint press I rented I used to pop all the joints, It had big enough cups and was super easy to do.
i ended up just doing the tie rods for now. ill do the uppers in a few weeks when i save up some more money, but for now she's back to riding fairly straight haha. the lowers still look good and hold grease so I'm not going to do them yet. but yea it all went fairly smooth except for my first outer, for some reason it didn't click in my brain that one of the ends on each side is gonna be reverse threaded until about 20 minutes later. so i spent about half the total time it took me to do it getting one end really really tight
