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Upper Ball Joint Help!

Joel Talka

Well-Known Member
Local time
12:43 PM
Joined
Jun 4, 2021
Messages
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Location
Fort Pierce Florida
Hi All;
I finally started pulling the front suspension apart on my '66 Coronet 440. The blasted upper ball joint does not want to budge.. I bought that special socket and tried my Milwaukee impact wrench with absolutely no luck. I tried a 1/2" breaker bar with a 6' extension, still no luck. I'm not sure where to go from here...

The whole underside of this car was sprayed with some kind of undercoating which is messy but should not prevent the thing from coming loose.

Did they weld them in place back in the day?? I'm enclosing a picture so you can see what I am talking about..

Appreciate any suggest as to how to get this thing outta there!!

Thanks,

Joel
IMG_6326.jpeg
 
Should not be welded. Must have been there a long time. Try a heat gun to warm up the metal it screw's into. Right hand thread. They are tough to get out for sure. Maybe some transmission fluid on it and let it set over night. Good luck.
 
Heat is your friend!!!
Use a torch to get that sucker hot and go to town on it with a pipe on a breaker bar.
Keep a bucket of water near by just in case the paint/undercoating start to flame..
It may take a few times of heating and cooling along with a healthy amount of penetrating oil but she'll break loose eventually.

Worst case scenario is buy a new set of A arms with the ball joint already installed.
 
First, use a wire brush and clean the area around the threads(top and bottom). Then I use a little heat around the outer thread area, that expands the metal and then penetrating oil will sink in. Let it sit for a couple of hours and then use your 6-foot bar. Make sure to use some anti seize when you install the new ball joints.
 
They can be tough. Soak it in penetrating oil for a few days, hit it with some heat, whack it with a hammer. It will come.
 
PartsGeek.com. I got a pair of powder coated w/ball joint installed for 120 bucks. Cheap considering all the work to recon the old ones. ruffcut.
 
Thanks everyone... I appreciate the input. I'll clean up the area of all that black gunk and then heat..hopefully it will come loose. Plan "B" will be new upper control arms! :thumbsup:
 
For the price of QA1 upper arms, IMO it's not worth replacing the old ones. Plus you gain better front end geometry at the same time.
 
The cool thing about these cars is that they were made out of some pretty stout material.
One can get fairly medieval with the force used to break old rusted threads apart as Dad demonstrated above, without too much worry about damage.
If you do f@ck something up, buy new. Name of the game.

Just a thought, maybe pull the UCA completely off and clamp it securely in a vice before trying to break the ball joint loose to eliminate the flex in the cam bolt area rather than trying to break it loose while on the car.
 
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6 foot cheater bar will move any vise. Leave attached to car till ball joint out.
 
Never,ever try to do that job without the UCA in the car. I've used pipes like dasbee's photo to get arms out, back in the day ! Now ? Got a pair of tubulars from PST, slapped them in, got good positive caster.... NEXT ?
 
I've read that some of the aftermarket UCAs are made from a thinner gauge material. If I went with aftermarket ones, I'd go with the tubular ones.
 
6 foot cheater bar will move any vise. Leave attached to car till ball joint out.
Absolutely true. I went through this at least twice. Best to leave it on the car. You might want to put some kind of barrier between that 6 foot Bar and the car in case it slips off.
 
They can be really tight. A good heavy duty Impact will usually get then out, but still takes some time. I have an old Snap-On Impact that I bought used, and it still wants as much pressure as my single stage compressor puts out (around 125-130 psi)
Heat will help too.
 
Hi All;
I finally started pulling the front suspension apart on my '66 Coronet 440. The blasted upper ball joint does not want to budge.. I bought that special socket and tried my Milwaukee impact wrench with absolutely no luck. I tried a 1/2" breaker bar with a 6' extension, still no luck. I'm not sure where to go from here...

The whole underside of this car was sprayed with some kind of undercoating which is messy but should not prevent the thing from coming loose.

Did they weld them in place back in the day?? I'm enclosing a picture so you can see what I am talking about..

Appreciate any suggest as to how to get this thing outta there!!

Thanks,

JoelView attachment 1253180
 
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