Replaced both lower ball joints at Christmas. Fantastic thread Evan. Moog is the way to go, use their parts on all my race cars. A few additional thoughts. My Ex has been a So Cal car since my girl friend bought it new. Rotors a true PITA to get off (see brake threads for ideas). Also steering knuckle (spindle) was frozen to one LBJ.
PB blaster is your friend. Give it plenty of soaking time and intermittent taps with hammer to loosen it. No real need for BFH, though out of impatience I did use one. Didn't really help. OK to hit control arms with it, but not knuckle IMO. I work slow and had to go get a couple sockets I didn't have in the middle of everthing, took me 8-10 hours. My axle nut was actually a 31 mm, used loctite blue on caliper bolts, stock tie rod castle nut required 13/16" deep well socket, ball joint castle nut 15/16", new Moog ball joint castle 1 1/16" and my ABS screws were 3/16" Allen. When the knuckle was stuck on the lower ball joint, I forgot I had a complete set of pickling forks and an air hammer in the corner. Go figure.
A few torque specs (generic) as published by Moog; LBJ castle nut 83-112 ft lbs at 83 turn just enough to place cotter pin never back it off, axle nut 254 ft lbs (get an extension), I've also seen axle nut specs to 300 ft lbs.
How did I know my LBJs were bad? Minor cupping on inside of both front tires. Looked underneath, both LBJ gaskets were torn. Posts 22 and 32 are both correct about how to check your ball joints but I've never been very good at it. By the time I can tell, they are long gone. Once I had mine out, one side was definitly bad, the other seemed OK but with the torn boot it wouldn't have lasted long.
The auto zone loaner ball joint press was great to remove them from the lower control arm but as stated earlier, too small to press them back in. The jack trick worked great. They do start at an angle because the largest ring hits a lip on the LCA but once under a little pressure a little tapping with a hammer and they tend to line up. Then just lift a little more and away they go.
Leveled the horse up with a little TT twist. The winch, mount and brush gaurd added almost 300 lbs to the front end. Got an alignment, it was all within factory specs already so added a camber adjuster kit and a little extra caster. Now 2 months and 6000 miles later, no unusual tire wear. Everything seems great.
Thanks again Evan for all your excellent work.
I now have a bad vibration in the front right after this and will post when I figure that out.
