Ball Joint-related venting...

[fizassist]

One more once - DO NOT waste your money buying Harbour Freight for this job! New shop rule - if I expect to put more than my own weight on the thing in terms of force, HF just won't cut it.

I found this out with the HF coil spring compressors. Even with anti-sieze, those things froze up solid on me, and the threaded rod was bending a lot. Of course, I have an unused HF ball joint press sitting in the garage; I'll probably try it this week and get something better when it fails.

 

[ChiXJeff]

As much as I hate to say it, be careful with that brush tarring & feathering HF. HF sells a number of different presses, and one of them looks to be identical to the one I spent <mumble> <mumble> bucks on a few years ago.

I did all 4 balljoints at notoriousDUG's place (with Chewbacca's help) in about 4 hours.

 

[5-90]

Oh, I've got some HF tools that I can use. I got my transmission jack from them, and it's just ducky.

Like I said, the change in my rule is that if I expect to put more than my own weight to it (about 250#,) then I'll get something better. Even without heat treat, it takes a pretty significant force to bend the press the way I did (I'd have to take it to school and either Brinnell or Rockwell it to calculate a useful answer,) and it should handle that amount of force.

Upside? I did get the OTC kit for about $90, all up, out of Fresno. And, I have some extra sleeves so I can modify one to make that "Dana 30" specific adapter - since I now have a pretty good idea how it would be used as well. Should save some time, I'd think.

Chinese steel and iron is basically US scrap, and well formulated. However, the Chinese just haven't gotten the hang of heat treat, or they're doing a crapshoot to see who notices and who doesn't. If I could straighten the press out, I'd see about getting it heat treated and bring it up to scratch - but that would probably cost more than the OTC I just bought...

5-90

 

[little red cheroke]

ive got a ball joint question....

are the loweres supposed to have a snap ring? it dosent look like there are snap rings on my current D30 but the new ball joints came with them....im not 100% sure what year this D30 is from. its a HP and im swapin it into my '01 xj and im replacin everything and installing the locker while its on the bench.


thanks

 

[MGrobe]

I did my ball joints back around when 5-90 was and I spent the coin on the press from OTC. I learned from flaring brake lines in the past that for some items that a good tool can make a project go smooth and quick and a poor tool can cost you man hours of wasted effort that consume the cost of buying a good tool.

My replacement ball joints came with the clips as well but I didn't use them as there isn't a snap ring groove.