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I had one of those "where have you been all my life" moments when the b/j eased loose. It didn't make a sound.

I'm sure a shop-press might have been better, but not in my situation.

harryset wrote:First I tried using a rig in my bench vise, using heat and hammer, the first BJ came out fine:


Ended up taking mine to a friends that has a 60 ton press. The next three BJ's came out sounding like a shotgun blast, and it took quite a bit of pressure to get them to budge.

That doesn't look like a C-clamp Harry.

A vice is just a HD C-clamp

I suppose ya got me there.

That was just an example of the force required to pop "some" BJ's. I have read a lot of stories of the C-clamp style bending. All of this totally depends on how much force is going to be required to do the individual ball joint in question. You won't know, until you start to remove them. The C-clamp method will work in some cases and not in others. The joints in my car were stuck in pretty hard, if I ever have to do them again, I expect that they won't be as bad to deal with.

Whenever you ask some of these questions online, some people will be telling you how easy things are. . .Life isn't like that.

I used a set of tie rod tools from HF to get them done, and they were, at best, marginal. When my tie rods came loose, they did so with a bang and things went flying.


Personally, I wish someone would adapt some tools to use with the portable hydraulic ram kits.

best press- welder! (metal shrinks after its burned to dark color)
...just use drill to open the balljoint and knoct the ballbolt out from the bottom.
weld the bead inside housing it will shrink and fall off
...pic coming:

Oh man, that is a nice Wilton vise you just broke.

I have a 70Ton Dake I bought for a song and change. Nobody wanted this press as it needed some serious TLC. Was probably close to 1300 lbs. Took it home and rebuilt it.

The press does balljoints like they are not even there. But there are times it takes about 30Ton or so to budge some of the old ones out. I machined the special toolings to do the balljoints in Type I, II.

I have the C-clamp style but modified it to remove King/Link pins only.

I've used this method with success as well.

hugging corners wrote:best press- welder! (metal shrinks after its burned to dark color)
...just use drill to open the balljoint and knoct the ballbolt out from the bottom.
weld the bead inside housing it will shrink and fall off
...pic coming:

Another trick is to get your mig welder and put a big ball of weld on the head of the BJ. Don't go to hard or you burn through. This does two thing, it allows you to heat it up which helps loosen it and it gives you something to hit with your hammer that sits proud of the arm.

That being said after dealing with so many 181 BJ's I got a 55t press and machined up some tooling to do it quick and easy. Even though it is not uncommon to go close to 50t before they fire out.

what about this press?
http://www.davepropst.com/Article/Art6/Article6.htm

Our shop has a huge press. 25 ton or something. It won't budge Thing T181 or bus ball joints if they are original and still fit tight. I take the cutting torch and carefully skin the ball joint. Keep the heat away from the spindle. Then they come out without any drama.

I have never tried the mig welder trick, but I will next time. The torch method makes a mess with hot stinky grease.

Astro Tools makes a good one, its a clone of the OTC one, Works well, thanks Tjenus