Ball joints

[johnsn]

I have a 1992 dakota sport 4 wheel drive, i am wondering how difficult it is to replace the upper and lower ball joints, do you have to remove the control arms ?

[sneakybert]

The upper ball joint is threaded into the control arm (you will need a special ball joint socket to remove ) and the lower ball joint is pressed in . You do not have to remove either control arm to service.

[slicknickel]

Tis' true, you will need a special socket to replace the upper ball joints. The lower ones are a breeze. Make sure that you borrow or buy a large c-clamp style ball joint press. I recomend removing the upper ball joints before removing the lowers. Reason? When you are going to press in the lowers you can run the threaded shaft of the press up through the upper ball joint hole. Makes life a little easier. The socket cost me about $45 bucks (special order from sears). I HIGHLY recomend you have air tools at your disposal. I bought a 18" 3/4 drive breaker bar to help me remove the upper ball joints. I could not budge them. I then tried hitting the breaker bar with a 4lb baby sledge-to no avail-. I even tried a 3' extension on the breaker bar-no good-. I weigh 215lbs and lift weights ----I could not make it move! I finally bought an air compressor and a 615lb/ft impact wrench (I finally had a good enough reason to give the wife)--now that spun those ball joints like I was taking the lid off of a tube of toothpaste. GET AIR!

A-Arms stay in place, unless you want to replace the control arm bushings while you are at it. Also might be a good time to give the entire front rack a good once over since you are going to get into most of it replacing those ball joints anyway.