I'm talking about item 10 in this picture.

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RRBlue wrote:

....snip.....

3. Remove rear ball joint

All good fun with lots of hammering and grazed knuckles until item 3. Totally seized. Drifts, hammers, pneumatic chisel all failed.

Ended up reassembling and taking to local garage who put it on the ramp. They needed heat and everything heavy they could hit it with.

After looking forward to this job for months, all very disappointing.

Not sure what I could have done to ease it up, as I had been applying easing agent and freeze spray over the past few days in preparation, except making sure over the years ensuring that the underneath is protected from corrosion. Having said that, this was not just sealed in by surface rust, there was clear signs of galvanic action between the concealed body of the ball joint casing and the hub.

I checked the vehicle service records which I have kept since I picked it up new in 2005. It appears that all these components were original after 200k miles. This is pretty impressive, even if it resulted in yet another feeling that middle age is taking its toll.

Anyway, I wasn't going to give up, so I made a simple tool to remove it. It's a fairly stout piece of steel channel I (badly) welded up. It's 5cm wide and I forget how long. It has a 20mm hole for the ball joint and two further holes 4cm from the central hole for some fairly sturdy bolts (24mm heads). I put some big washers in where the bolts touch the hub so as not to damage the hub.

Click image to enlarge

Literally 2 minutes later...

Click image to enlarge

You can see here how it was damaged by me hitting it, but it was never going to move that way.

Click image to enlarge

Anyway, anyone else struggling with this I hope they find this useful. I couldn't find any off the shelf tool for removing these type of ball joints.

👍

put in our wiki, thanks david..  ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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Excellent idea!! Thanks for sharing. Formerly happymadison1978

Was trying to come up with similar idea of pushing / pulling when I did mine but you've cracked it with that invention!!
You could probably market it as it is a complete bast**d to get out!!

Forum rental tool??

 There is nothing that can't be fixed with a hammer😜😜
FFRR 4.4 SDV8 Autobiography Santorini Black.
Fiat 500x 1.4 multiair Lounge 2015
2010 LR D4 Commercial 2.7 TDV6

I like to whale the living out of the with a big hammer and a big chisel onto no6 Range Rover

Everyone needs a hobby

That's proper!
Well done
. Cheers, Greg
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
2011 Vogue SE 4.4 with lots of toys in Stornaway

Excellent. After spending a few days getting my ball joints out this would've been invaluable  Gavin

2005 Range Rover Vogue SE 4.2 Supercharged V8

Follow my 4.2 Supercharged antics -
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FKNA yeah! You just took the fear out of what could have been a real pain in the *** job.

Just be warned: I tried a similar approach, only a little more sophisticated, as I had access to a fully equipped mech workshop at the time. I ground and machined a piece of steel pipe to sit over the joint, but with room for it to come out. I threaded an extension onto the balljoint stud and fed it through a bored hydraulic ram which was seated on top of the pipe. I could exert 15t of pulling power with this setup. I only needed about half that to pull the ball clean out of the socket! The socket was still frozen solid in the hub. I ended up drilling through the socket and machining a thick washer to cover the back of it, then fed a threaded bar through the whole lot with a nut at the end and pulled with the jack. It let co with a great bang in a cloud of rust-smoke.
Conlcusion: Do NOT attempt this without plenty of tools on hand. The improvised tool in the OP is a great idea and it will probably work in most cases, but be prepared for the distinct possibility that it might not.

Cheers!
Henrik

@Henrik07 - To be honest I thought the same thing would happen - it would just pull the ball from the socket. But then it's a lot easier to get the rest of it out in the same way you describe. I can't see why you think my tool wouldn't do that also, and even if it didn't you can then easily cut it out.

I'm not saying it wouldn't work. I'm just saying one needs to be prepared for stripped threads and other problems because of how well these things are stuck together. Having a bunch of tools and materials on hand can be the key to not getting stuck half-way through the job. Good job on a clever tool!

Ok.

Good idea, but as some others have said too.. its not as straight forward as it sounds.

The best way, as have found is to use a chisel to cut out the metal ball cover at the top of the ball joint and remove the internal plastics. The ball part of the joint comes out and then you can easily chisel it out.. (use a Good hammer and put a bottle jack under the hub) the whole process takes 15mins. Current:
- L560 Velar HSE R-Dynamic D180
- Peugeot 508 2011 - 2.2 HDi GT

Past:
- FFRR V 2010 - 3.6 TDV8
- Citroen C4 1.6i Petrol
- Mitsubishi Shogun 3.2 DID
- Peugeot 607 2.2 HDi
- Nissan Primera 1.8 SVE
- Honda Civic 1.6 VTEC