Replacing front lower balljoints - anyone managed a simple solution?
 

Hey guys,

I'm deciding on whether I should bother to do the front axle. I need all bushings and ball joints new, but I don't want to spend hundreds of my hard earned Euros on the lower balljoint arm sections (front lower rear arm). You can buy the ball joint on it's own, I have seen that, but has anyone managed to actually get it removed and refitted yet?

Also, has anyone managed to replace the lower bushes without having to remove the springs?

Would it be doable to, for example, put a trolley jack under the spring pan, remove the wheel and co, undo the front half of the wishbone, replace the front bush, refit, screw the pan to the arm, press the arm into it's position and then do the rear one like that afterwards? I really don't fancy playing with the spring again, as it wasn't fun last time I did a friend's axle... Or would it be sufficient to use a threaded rod through the middle and use that to 'support'? I know the spring is under massive tension/compression...

I replaced the lower ball joints but left the bushings alone as they looked fine. I suppose I should have thought harder about the bushings as I had the control arms out so I could give them to a machine shop to press out the ball joints and reinstall the new ones. The springs stayed in the car but I did use threaded rod spring compressors I made up based on what others here had done. They worked well enough but I would caution that these springs seem scary when loaded up. Could be I'm just getting more cautious in my old age. I know I've done plenty of stupid stuff under cars in my ute, thankfully I'm no worse for the wear...

Cheers Mate!

How did you find the removal of the balljoints themselves? Do you remember what kind of press you needed?

Removed post reply as X300 and X308 are very different setups .

Thanks , Parker

That drawing is the wrong one for an X308...

Ok , I thought they were the same if not close , editing

press time...
 

The shop had a beefy 100 ton press but I don't know how much is needed to get these out. They did tell me there was a pretty loud bang when they let loose. I delivered them with the shoulders cut off of the ball joints so I didn't have to worry about the shop nicking the control arms when they did it so there might have been some interference between the cup and the shoulder remains I left them with when I delivered them.

Hi Daim,

I already tackled the replacement of the lower control arm bushes some months ago. I went with removing the springs, as I ran into quite a few dangerous situations a few years ago, when I tried to do it the way you proposed in your first post.

When I had to replace the front wheel bearing some years ago, I didn't manage to release the lower balljoint from the hub. So I supported the spring pan with a trolley jack and removed the lower rear control arm, so that I could bring the hub+control arm to a dealer with a press, to get my bearing replaced.
Even the full weight of the car couldn't compress the spring enough to remove the control arm securely. In addition to this, the whole "construction" was so instable, that the trolley jack flipped away several times...and that's frightening!!! I'll never will do sth like this again!
In the end, I had to use two or three trolley jacks at the same time, to get the control arm back into it's position against the spring's tension. Finally it was more time consuming than if I had removed the springs in the first place (but I hadn't a spring compressor at hand).
For replacing the two lower control arm bushings, you're in with 5-7 hours of work for each side.

Replacing the lower ball joints has been reported that they can be replaced in situ with a huge C-Clamp...but since I didn't find anything similar here in Germany, I'll change out my ball joints by removing the whole control arm and with a regular workshop press. This sucks, but in my opinion, it's the most safest way ;-)

As already reported several times, the lower ball joints will go with a big bang, I think/hope that a good 20 ton press will do the job (the upper ball joints went at around 10 tons of pressure).

Hey Alex,

Sounds familiar. I just hate to do the springs... So time consuming. Though I would possibly lower my car at the same time...

Maybe if I used say a strap to tug the arm round again... Hmm... I waS also considering a whole axle to overhaul but I can't be bothered to do the lot...

The upper arm bushes go first, and can be done easily. The lower arm bushings are bigger and seem to last longer.

I already described in another thread how I did the lower balljoints on the car, using an OTC balljoint removal tool, after grinding off, drilling out, and sawing through the joint to release the pressure on the fit. No big bang is then necessary.

The upper balljoints and bushings I did with my hydraulic press.

I replaced both the upper and lower ball joints in place with a mega C clamp made for ball joint removal. I needed an impact gun to tighten it enough and it sounded like a gun when it released. Do not disconnect the shock absorber or the spring pan. The spring is bent and angled towards you and if it releases - game over. I agree with the other posts that the front spring is the scariest thing I have ever worked with on a car and I will never touch it again!!! I removed the spring and the control arms working off my garage floor and even with the factory spring compressor it scared the @#$ out of me.
The lower control arm bushings last a long time and I would leave them alone.

Just lock the spring in place with a threaded rod tool and leave the spring pan on one of the front lower arms.

Even when I changed BOTH lower control arm bushes or complete arms when I worked at the dealer I just did them ONE-AT-A-TIME with the threaded rod spring compressor holding the spring pan still bolted to ONE of the lower arms!!

Then assemble and remove the OTHER arm.

No need to remove the spring unless THAT is the objective!!

bob

Cheers Bob!

That is exactly what I was hoping for... I don't really fancy removing the springs (yet) just to do the joints...

Hi to all,

I tackled the lower balljoints just this saturday and I'm happy to report that both were replaced successfully!

Since I do not have a lift and hate doing this kind of work in the runway, I've to hire a lift in a rental garage and can use their tools like the workshop press, transmission jacks etc too.
Since they have a big spring compressor (like the one in the picture), I decided to disassemble the whole.
To fit the spring compressor, the shock, the upper wishbone, the vertical link and the stabilizer link had to go. No need to disconnect the brake caliper, just hang it aside.
The spring pan will lever all the way down when removing the shock, vertical link and stabilizer link due to the spring's tension and this will drastically increase the risk of the spring jumping out. This is where the transmission jack comes into play. With that and a wooden block you can support the spring pan from levering down, so that you can fit the spring compressor securely. In addition the support will make it way easier to remove the stabilizer link, since it will get under tension when lowering the spring pan.

With the spring compressor fitted, tightened and the spring compressed, you can lower the transmission jack all the way down so that the pan will drop and allow you to take the spring out.

Then I took the whole pan+wishbones out (do not forget to mark the exact positions of the two eccentric bolts to prevent messing up your axle geometry) and removed the rear control arm from the pan.
From there on all went smooth. With an angle grinder I cut off two small pieces to make room for more supporting surface to fit the control arm into the press.
The ball joints needed 15 tons of pressure to release initially (with a loud bang) and could be pressed out entirely with 5-8 tons of constant pressure.
Pressing the new ball joint in was easy...another 5-8 tons of constant pressure to fit them snug.
Assembly was reverse to disassembly.
On the right side I had to release the stabilizer bar bracket on one side to fit the spring compressor...didn't take much more time, but allowed me to swap out the bracket bushes which I have already lying around for ages. Watch out, this stabilizer bar is bloody heavy!

The whole job took me around 8 hours.
As parts I went with the Lemförder 2698001 ball joints (around 30 €/each).
The workshop manual recommends replacing the spring pan bolts (JZS 100166) and the huge Torx bolt (JZS 100118) at the lower control arms due to micro-encapsulated adhesive. Since I replaced the bolts already last time, I confined myself with applying new loctite.

If there are any questions I'm happy to help :-)

Good idea!
If I had such a rod tool at hand, I'd possibly have done it like this too...but the time I'd have had to invest to construct the tool, would have been the same as to just use the garage's spring compressor.
But from my point of view, definitely worth a try, if sb doesn't own a spring compressor. So fingers crossed for Damien's job!

I removed arm and took it to local machine shop along with ball joint and bushings. They removed old, installed new ones using their giant press in a few minutes.

This was the method i used to strip the front suspension and subframe out of my XJR.

-Place a jack under the spring pan and take up the weight of the car.
-Remove the pan bolts one at a time and replace with a length of threaded rod. 6" in think?
-Slowly lower the jack to decompress the spring.
-Voila! Not going to lie, it was still a little scary.

As for the ball joints, i only just managed to press the old ones out with a 20ton hydraulic press. They required lots of heat and some percussion with a lump hammer before they popped free. It was pretty loud and violent.