Lower Ball Joint Help, Knuckle is Stuck!

[wisneski7]

This is a pretty straight forward job. Everything was going good until trying to remove the knuckle. Everything is off, however I can't get it to slide off the lower ball joint. I've soaked it down good, hit it with hammer forever, it simply wont budge. What should I try next?

Aaron

 

[Rick]

You've been hitting the knuckle itself with a BFH around the meat that holds the ball joint stud in?

How about turning the castle nut upside down, so that no thread of the stud are exposed and whacking at it that way? Warning though, that will total the ball joint, so it will need to be replaced. Not sure if that was your ultimate goal or if you were taking it off to do something else.

 

[wisneski7]

I've tried hitting the top of the knuckle where the upper would slide in. I tried driving it straight down with not luck. I've tried hitting all around the knucked near the lower, still can't budge it. I am changing the upper and lowers so if I wreck it, no loss.

Aaron

 

[Ray Lobato]

Take the ball joint off of the lower A arm, so it's just hanging by the stud to the steering knuckle.then do like Rick said and put the castle nut back on. Then smack the ball joint where the castle nut is, real hard. That should break it free from the steering knuckle.

 

[wisneski7]

I got it, thanks guys!

Aaron

 

[KPT]

I've used a two jaw puller before. You have to take the rotor shield off first.

 

[Tom Brown]

I'm going to leave my solution to this issue here. Hopefully, it will help someone who has this problem and searches for a solution.

I beat on the knuckle for a long time with no luck until I supported the LBJ stud with a floor jack. I put the crown nut on upside down and then raised the floor jack to lift that side of the truck up a wee bit.

The point being, the stud was well supported by the jack. Once supported, a couple of whacks of the hammer and the knuckle was free.

The issue was that too many components were soaking up energy from the hammer blows. By supporting the stud, the hammer blows were going directly to the kunckle/LBJ stud.


Good luck to all.