Best way of removing ball joint rivets on '96 Lumina?

[sunster]

Is there any tips and tricks on removing the rivets that hold the original ball joint to the knuckle? My concern is that once I have the car on jack stands that there will be little to no room to get a electric drill with drill bit under the knuckle to drill out the rivets from the bottom. I have read in another post on this forum to grind off the heads and drive the rivets through with a punch. Are there any other suggestions from those who have already performed this task?

Thanks in advance for any responses,
Sunny

[jeffcoslacker]

I always had air tools, so I'd use a cut-off tool as you described or the air hammer with a nice sharp chisel makes short work of them....

[richtazz]

I've always used an angle head grinder as Jeff stated. If you don't have air tools, you can get an electric one cheap enough. The heads of the rivets are actually pretty soft metal, so even the old hammer and chisel method isn't that difficult.

[Blue Bowtie]

One thing you should not do is heat the lower control arm, potentially annealing it. That all but leaves out the option of a cutting torch.

[sunster]

Thanks again everyone for your responses. I have now completed the replacement of the ball joints.

Here is how it was tackled. I centered punched each riviet and drill completely through with a 1/8" drill bit. I then follow up with a 1/4" drill bit counter boring about half way through the old ball joint flange. I finally followed up with a larger diameter drill bit just sized a little under the diameter of the rivet head. An air hammer with a flat chisel made easy work of seperating the old ball joint away from the knuckle. I then used a die grinder to flush out the remainder of each riviet. A center punch was finally used to remove the remaining (top) head portion of the rivet.

As alwas I hope this helps out others who decide to tackle this job. Tomorrow, will be the outer tie rod ends.

Sunny