2wd lower ball joints

[wargle]

I have a 97 XLT, 2wd that needs upper and lower ball joints. Does the spindle have to be removed to change the lower ball joint? Thanks.

 

[swshawaii]

Lower:

www.howstuffinmycarworks.com/Explorer_lower_balljoint.html

 

[steadyhand]

I have a 97 XLT, 2wd that needs upper and lower ball joints. Does the spindle have to be removed to change the lower ball joint? Thanks.

I just did my whole front end also. If you have to do the lower ball joints your gonna want everything out of the way. Your going to need the space to put the ball joint press on there and it takes a good amount of force to pop that ball joint out. I used a 18" breaking bar with 3 feet of pipe to pop mine out and it still wasn't easy.

I would do upper and lower at the same time when working on one side. You don't want to disassemble it all twice on each side. If you insist on doing only the uppers or lowers then I would do the uppers first since you tend to end up with more wheel wobble when they go bad. The lower ball joints usually create more of a squeek sound before allowing much wheel movement.

 

[bobflood]

A tip: Put the new ball joints in the freezer overnight; take each of them out as you are ready to install. Freezing will cause the metal to shrink just a tiny bit, which makes installing them into the holes significantly easier.

 

[steadyhand]

A tip: Put the new ball joints in the freezer overnight; take each of them out as you are ready to install. Freezing will cause the metal to shrink just a tiny bit, which makes installing them into the holes significantly easier.

I did this with bearings when I installed 410 gears in my 91 GT. It makes it a lot easier. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to do it with my ball joints. Of course getting them in wasn't near as difficult as getting them out.