When I replaced the lower ball joints, I purchased 4 pieces of threaded rod. and nuts I replaced each of the bolts (one at a time) with a threaded rod and a nut. Then I was able to lower the pan bit by bit. It took a while, but I was able to pull the spring safely. After the ball joint was replaced, I reversed the process.

 

I did mine recently, having read it wasn't a hard job, and it wasn't so bad. Maybe I was flirting with disaster???

I left the shock in place and placed a jack under the spring pan allowing the jack and shock to take the spring pressure. Made sure the jack was in a no slip area of the pan. From memory, undid the top 2 bolts on the arms (pushed them UP and out of the way) and loosened the large upper ball joint nutt, replaced the BJ upper two bolts and used a BJ separator on the top. Removed the upper,,,, leaned out the upright (not as careful as I should have been with the brakeline but it's a heavy mess of stuff) and used a impact to start the lower large top nutt, leaving the bottom 4 bolts, then used the separator on the bottom after loosening the 4 bottom bolts, popped right out... *** clenched, replaced lower BJ, tightened up the bottom 4 nutts and tightened the large lower BJ top nutt, then did up the top ball joint.

With the jack I made sure that the jack had clearly BEGUN to compress the spring and the shock,,, not lifted but compressed a little only, to take a good amount of the load OFT the single shock bolt... The jack was also super helpful in lining up the upper BJ, bolts, and the top of the fiddly BJ with the arms. Basically, that's what I remember doing and it went pretty ok. Had some trouble with threads on the top two bolts (age) on the top BJ to the arms, so,,,, I would suggest replacing them. And, at least the bolt closest to the rotor should be an OEM replacement for clearance of the rotor. New lock nutts, etc....

 

I should add. Again from memory, the angle of the top ball joint, I just couldn't get it RIGHT trying to use the jack placed under the pan so again, *** clenched, I putt all that weight on the shock bolt, lowered the jack and put it further out on the upright, right under the recently placed 4 bolts,,, directly under the lower BJ... This worked.

If I had it to do over again I would probably use jack stands (or anything) so the full spring load wasn't on the shock bolts in those few minutes... But, I get a strange mix of sloppy, rushy, tired, and not so we'll thought out during a long day of messing with this car sometimes. I NEED to stop this and not let stupid happen so often,,, when I'm doing my thing.

 

I've done ball joints on my cars several times. I've always had success putting one side of the car on a jack stand and using the hydraulic jack, under the pan, or maybe the brake rotor (using a piece of wood between the two, to protect the rotor) to adjust the angle and position of the ball joints as they were replaced. It's worked fine. Sometimes you might need to adjust the steering to get the angle to work.