your favorite ball joint re-attachment technique?

[tastyratz]

So I changed my axle last night. All fine and dandy, but I cant seem to get the ball joint pressed back into the lca! I tried lowering the car onto wood blocks, dropping it on wood blocks, hitting with a hammer, prying with an oversized pickle fork, etc. I cant get it to seat down nicely enough.
When I try to tighten it down the rod on the lbj spins with the nut not allowing tightening. Prying it down a little bit with the pickle fork worked for awhile but now ill be lucky if it gets 1/4 turn before it breaks free again.

Anyone have any other ideas?

 

[TurboMirage]

why did you break the balljoint loose? why not disconnect the LCA from the subframe instead?

 

[K2e2vin]

because the LCA would still be in your way; CRXs came stock with "traction bars" like the accords; and removing those are a bitch(not alot of room; have to use combination wrench or ratcheting box-end wrench).

probably some grease spilled out. pull it out, clean with brake cleaner, and try again(this is for the bolt/free spinning stud). if you cant even get it in the hole, shimmy the knuckle assembly, should drop in there.

 

[tastyratz]

yea I had to take it out to swing the spindle out of the way and slide the axle out that last inch. so you think just cleaning it out and getting all the excess grease outta there should do the trick then? I figured it should just compress in and not budge grease or not so I didnt bother cleaning off the bit of grease that got on there. My next trick was to try driving the car over a speedbump and hope it just jammed down lol

 

[TurboMirage]

gotcha. my bad!

ive done it on a 92-95 a few times, and i knew the suspensions were slightly different but didnt know they were that different.

 

[phunky.buddha]

I always take loose both the inner lower control arm bolt and the radius arms. It's not too hard.

As for reattaching the ball joints, I've always just hammered it into place enough to get 2-3 full threads to show, then used the castle nut to squeeze everything together.

 

[tastyratz]

yea it just wasnt working for me the other day, part of it was my install ran extremely late in the night and I had to be quiet since I was next to someones apartment. I went the next day, sprayed it with carb cleaner and wiped it a few times then smashed it with a big wood block 3-4 times then install was a snap

 

[reckedracing]

i usually just jack underneath the control arm... jacking = weight/friction = it stops free spinning...

 

[tastyratz]

tried it, still wasnt working for me. Big giant block of wood...well... that worked for me! I was a very handy dandy tool. Made a great parking brake, and a great deadblow big sucka hammer tool! It slices, it dices, it julians fries!

 

[big22]

A 3 pound deadblow hammer works for me so far