My standard ball joint press repeatedly tries to seat the upper BJ off center. Not sure if my kit is missing a part or what, but can’t flip my U bracket upside down due to clearance. Orion Motor universal ball joint kit.
Real Time Help - Upper Ball Joints
- Thread starter GOLIGHTLY
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- #2
Looking for advice on how to seat this properly.
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- #3
Did this job on a 100 series with no issues, same tool.
I’d pull the arm and use a press. From my experience with these tools getting the arm out isn’t much more work.. even if you don’t have a press this would give you the clearance to flip the bracket. Or even just loosen the upper arm bolt so the arm will swing down.
Other than that a very small chamfer on the side of the hole that receives the joint can help things go in straight. I’d use as fine of a rat tail file as I could find.
Other than that a very small chamfer on the side of the hole that receives the joint can help things go in straight. I’d use as fine of a rat tail file as I could find.
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- #5
Do you mean you’d use a bench vice with appropriate kit receivers, or would you just use the press kit with the greater clearance?
Pardon my ignorance here, all this front end stuff was wildly mundane on the 100 and for some reason rather eventful on the 200.
I mean a hydraulic press, and I admit having one that is easy for me to say. But often you can take the arm to most close by shops and they can do the job for you.
But yeah even having the arm off can help with clearance for your tool. It does kinda suck making room to get the UCA bolt out but isn’t as bad as it seems before actually doing it. I found tightening the bolt/nut again at ride height to be the toughest part.
I just look at it as reducing the risk of damaging the bore the ball joint needs to get pressed into.. something of an investment. I trust that you’ve done everything you can to get it lined up already, given your prior experience doing the job on a 100.
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- #7
Gotta be honest, the process on the 100 was pretty idiot proof. Didn’t have the same clearance or centering issues. Weird.
I’ll give those tips a shot in the morning, assuming the tricycle is still there in the morning.
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- #8
Much appreciated @bloc , solution was (as it typically is in life) more leverage. I know I’m commuting at least a handful of sins here, but got the job done by using a pry bar and a brake caliper hangar. Much easier to seat the ball joint neatly with adequate clearance for the tool screw head. No loosening of the UCA bolt required. Much closer to my previous experience. Appreciate you talking me off the ledge.
Thanks for posting the solution.. will help someone in the future.
How many miles are on this thing that it needs upper ball joints? Mine seemed tight still when I removed the stock arms at ~170k
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- #10
Truthfully, no indication that they really needed to be replaced, but I was doing tie rods, bushings, end links and lowers and figured might as well while I was at it. Only at 148k miles right now. Before removing there wasn’t much of any play that I could feel (same with the lowers frankly).
Worth noting most of this work was prompted by 1- a promotion and pay raise at work lol and 2- a slight pull to the right, not associated with alignment. Suspect tie rods were the primary culprit, given that they certainly had more slop in the joints than I would have liked.
To be clear.. inners?
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- #12
Outers, given the condition of that ball joint where it meets the knuckle, but doing both (same reasons as above… rather just knock it all out at once).
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- #13
And I guess I owe a correction… worn tie rods would presumably affect alignment, I would think.