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knuckle not seating all the way on ball joint, pics inside, please help...

northwestxj

NAXJA Member #1283
Location
washington
I'm doing the WJ knuckle conversion and am having a problem with the drivers side knuckle not seating all the way up on the ball joint. The passenger side went fine, but for some reason the knuckle wont go all the way up on the drivers and there is a little gap. The lower seems to be pretty close though. I am using WJ ball joints, lowers and uppers.

Both are torqued correctly, (lower 80 foot pounds, and upper 75). I need to get this done, any ideas?

Heres a couple pics for reference...

Picture052.jpg


Picture051.jpg
 
well hopefully you figured this out already if it was needed ASAP.

but sometimes a little grease or debris gets on the face of the balljoint or the knuckle... just a little bit can cause this gap to happen.

I have had this problem in the past tho too. I have on occasion torqued beyond 75/80lbs to close the gap, then backed the nuts off and re-torqued to the required ft/lbs.

also, as above, the grease will fill that gap a bit once the rubber bulges down.
 
That's pretty common, and not something i would worry too much about. Check and retorque the balljoint nuts after 20 miles.
 
Had the same problem, is the ball joint filled with grease? Also once you put weight on the knuckle, the gap will change.

I didn't grease it yet and I know that will bulge the rubber a little bit, but I also didn't grease the other side either and it went all the way up just fine...
 
That's pretty common, and not something i would worry too much about. Check and retorque the balljoint nuts after 20 miles.

Thats what I'm hoping is the weight of the rig and driving it will help fix the gap, then I can
re-torque. Hopefully that works.
 
haha good timing! I have the WJ knuckle conversion and I just changed my ball joint - uppers and lowers (lowers were replaced with grand lowers - stock joints had 104k on em! bleh) and noticed this as well. It seems that the lower ball joint sits snug inside the knuckle where as the upper has this 1/4 inch gap. I snugged down the lowers and then tightened the top, filled with grease and there still is a slight gap between top of knuckle and grase boot whereas the bottom joints boot is snug inbetween knuckle and axle C. I just drove 400 miles and will go out and see if the weight of the vehicle changed the gap.
 
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