Yet Another UCA/LCA Ball Joints Question

Heh @Kevins60 thanks, once I got everything out it took like 6 hours to put it all back together. I torqued the cam bolts under load, and wound up getting crowfoot wrenches for the rear ones so I didn't have to futz with the rack again. I never would have thought it would take 2 days to get the tie rods and other bits loose lol.

 

Percussive impact is your friend. I have a craftsman c-3 impact gun that made short work of the castle nuts and my grandfather’s monkey wrench that broke the TREs loose with one shot from a 4lb maul. I lost all my time trying to press the UBJs out and doing the UCA bushings. I gave up on the ball joints and took the knuckles over to the neighborhood garage. $50 and half a day later I had the new UBJs installed. The UCA bushings were a mess. I tried using a small drill bit to drill a bunch of holes in the rubber (fail) and then using a hole saw to try and cut through the rubber (fail and ruined up my hole saw). Checked back here at TW and everything i read says heat the CA with a propane torch and the bushings gets soft and fall out. And they do, but in my case they caught fire and fell out and one left a burning trail of vulcanized rubber when it missed the catch bucket and it rolled across the garage floor. I had to pressure wash the garage floor and workbench because that melted rubber sticks to and stains everything.

 

Yeah "what could go wrong?" LOL

 

As it turns out, this pull was exactly what he said in 2018, I needed a new rack. Now have new LCA's, ball joints, rack, coiiovers and shocks from suspensionlifts.com, it drives like a new truck and the handling is incredibly tight. See more pics here.