Ball Joint...foiled by an effing ball joint...

[Tailfin]

How embarrassing... Ok I've never done much suspension work before, and never done a ball joint before, but peeking at the service manual and looking at the part, seemed like a no-brainer. So here goes...

I get the pry bar-like ball joint separator at Advance Auto, jack up the car, take the wheel off (rear driver side), and yep, there's the ball joint.....Hmm..the new one has a nut on it...hmm..the old one has a great blob of brown rust on it...with no discernable (I did not spell that wrong..but this thing underlined it in red...pssh! Anyway....) "edge" which my handy wrench could grab onto. Judging from the new joint, I should be seeing the rubber boot-like material behind the nut...but it looks brown/rusty as well...as if it were all metal and seems like it's practically fused to the arm. I heated it up with a propane torch and whacked it a bit with a hammer...nothing seemed to come loose for me. I finally...and here's the part I will never live down...even to myself...took a hacksaw and cut through the middle of the joint stud, thinking if I did that, I'd have to be able to get it off somehow....errrmmm.... So yeah, now I can't drive it because the ball joint is completely "disconnected," and I still can't get either end out of the arm(s). If anyone has some insight as to where I went wrong or what I'm missing...it would be most appreciated...

['89AccordLX(Rus)]

Since the threaded section has a taper to fit tightly inside the knuckle opening, you won't have much luck trying to get it out until the great glob of rust is removed. I would suggest getting a small grinder and grinding off what used to be the nut until the stud can be pounded through the hole. Or you could try and use a nut-splitter on it and hopefully it'll split and you'll be able to pound the stud out with less trouble. HTH

[Tailfin]

Well I took my friend's handy-dandy cutting torch to the nut... seemed to go well. The nut is off, the end of the bolt too, and it's not welded to the knuckle lol...well...so I took a hammer and chisel to try pounding it out...uh...no... So I took vice grips to grab the other end of the stud in order to try to turn it to loosen it...uh...no... Well...so I took the torch to the other end, hoping to melt out the stud, thinking that perhaps since it is tapered, I could melt the "thick" part and...well, no... That was dumb, but I am obviously frustrated by now . Anyhoo...the knuckle metal is seemingly harder than the stud metal, so I didn't totally deform it or anything, and it looks like if I could grind/drill out the mess, that I could be successful... If I have to, I'll grab another knuckle from el salvage yard. I'm hoping there is a Dremel or Roto Zip (I have both) bit that will make this easy on me.

Anyway just venting now hehe. Though if anyone has expeditious ideas, I'll certainly be open :-D. But wtf...for a ball joint? This kinda stuff steams me on any car. They couldn't afford to put a stainless steel nut/bolt on parts of the car that are blasted with water....grrr...

[Oldblueaccord]

I think if I am understanding you correctly the nut is off so to seperate it you need a pickle fork or hit the knuckle with a hammer and it may pop out.

wp

[Tailfin]

Ideally, yes... However, as I mentioned in the first post, I fool-heartedly took a hacksaw to the stud in the middle after failing with my pickle fork in an attempt to better access the stud....basically to get to a spot on it I could get vice grips on to twist it loose to no avail. So the ball joint is in two pieces now, both of them stuck into their respective knuckle with 43183409 ft.-lbs of rust. What I'm planning on is getting a little generic puller to try to separate them, and a grinding bit on a Dremel or Roto-Zip to bore out the loose/half melted stud from the one piece which I tried to completely remove with the torch...again...to no avail.

['89AccordLX(Rus)]

Get a pitman arm puller (~15 bucks from most autostores). It should be able to push the remains of the stud out. These pullers work on every balljoint on this car too.

[Tailfin]

Thanks for the input. I'll do that. May the designer of these things burn in the fiery pits of.....well...a really hot fire...

[Tailfin]

Well, I got a generic pulley puller, since it would fit over both the knuckle and the arm (being my joint is in two pieces...). The knuckle part which I had taken a torch to actually came out pretty easily with the puller. The other half of the joint in the arm is still at large... The puller started ripping the metal on one side a bit...looked like it would give/slip off before getting it, so I took it back off. I did notice a slight "crack" between the joint piece and the arm though...so I've blasted it with penetrating lubricant and am hoping that makes me able to get that off somehow... What fun this has been :-D.

[Jasonf860]

How come you didn't just get the whole arm instead of just the ball joint?

[Tailfin]

It ain't broke, so I ain't fixing it... I had no reason to get the whole arm. It's almost twice as expensive, and after all the other crap I've had to pour into this monkey-engineered vehicle, I don't have it to burn. I shouldn't have to "expect" something to go wrong with the job. That's why the design infuriates me so...

Anyhoo, I'll get it out somehow. By the way, here is a photograph of the part I got...

http://info.rockauto.com/BeckArnley/...ml?1014714.jpg

Where is that little snapring doodad supposed to go? Between the control arm and the flat end of the joint, or between the rubbery part somewhere? I would guess the first one...hey, maybe it would prevent the joint from getting stuck in the arm...

[MessyHonda]

im going to be doing my lower ball joints...i got them from autorocket but i got the moog ones...like 30 bucks each side.

[Tailfin]

Well I'm thinking of just ordering new control arms... The damned thing refuses to come out. The puller I have is slightly adjustable, and you screw in nut thingamaboos to tighten the puller arms against whatever you're pulling...and it's a bit big for it...so if I try to pull it, one of the arms eventually just snaps off, and it's eating more of the arm metal than it is pulling it off the joint piece. I've tried hammering, hammering a screwdriver/chisel into the fingernail-thick space I've moved it...nothing works. It's been soaked in penetrating lube as well. The pitman arm puller looks like the right size for the knuckle, but not for the arm...the puller arms would go over the part of the joint I'd be trying to push past them.

['89AccordLX(Rus)]

Well I'm thinking of just ordering new control arms... The damned thing refuses to come out. The puller I have is slightly adjustable, and you screw in nut thingamaboos to tighten the puller arms against whatever you're pulling...and it's a bit big for it...so if I try to pull it, one of the arms eventually just snaps off, and it's eating more of the arm metal than it is pulling it off the joint piece. I've tried hammering, hammering a screwdriver/chisel into the fingernail-thick space I've moved it...nothing works. It's been soaked in penetrating lube as well. The pitman arm puller looks like the right size for the knuckle, but not for the arm...the puller arms would go over the part of the joint I'd be trying to push past them.

All of the upper control arm ball joints on these cars are NOT replaceable. What you ordered is a lower ball joint. That is the reason it has a circlip included, because a circlip is used in the lower arms. I suggest you get a new control arm and not waste time and effort trying to replace a piece that is not designed to be replaceable at all. Glad you managed to get the stud out of the knuckle. Good luck!

[Tailfin]

The control arms have already been ordered lol...but what the devil then...? I've double checked and the description (from rockauto) said ball joints - rear upper... Ah well... And why are just the ball joints available if the thing is not even servicable? That's evil... Plus, the service manual shows a puller being put on it to remove it...grrr

[Jasonf860]

The control arms have already been ordered lol...but what the devil then...? I've double checked and the description (from rockauto) said ball joints - rear upper... Ah well... And why are just the ball joints available if the thing is not even servicable? That's evil... Plus, the service manual shows a puller being put on it to remove it...grrr

I noticed that they do sell the upper ball joints for the cars but after reading and talking with some people, determined that it would just plain be easier to replace the whole arm, even at an inflated price. I'm sure they can be replaced, but not by your average back yard mechanic.

[w261w261]

You drive a 1990 Cadillac and you're calling your Honda a "monkey-engineered vehicle?" Forgetting the racial overtones of what you said, what vehicles would put in the category of "Non Monkey-engineered?"

[Tailfin]

Yeah, it was pretty easy once I got the arms. It's still messed up there because the ball joints I got first are different than the ones that came in the arms, yet they were labeled that way. I have an e-mail to write them...

LOL, as for the monkey-engineered vehicle, there was no racial overtone intended, just the primitive one. But to answer your question, I consider non-monkey engineered something like a carburetor with less than 10^13 vacuum hoses coming off it, just asking for a mess there. I, and several others on here, have removed most of the car's junk and it runs better. If you take something off a car and it runs better, that throws serious doubt into the engineering, and it's just just worn parts. But don't get me wrong here...

As far as cars go in general, I don't think Hondas are all that bad... I think THIS Honda needs a kick in the buttocks...and as for my Cadillac, I could have a few words for their designers too. I did not say that my Cadillac was better....Mind you, I never had to hold the bloody pedal down to warm it up, and it doesn't need to idle at 1/3 throttle in order to keep from stalling in cold weather. Although computer-controlled stuff can be a pain to diagnose and such, once you know the procedures with it, I think it's much better. For example, all the ridiculous solenoids and vacuum-controlled diaphrams that control the idle on this car at all the different engine conditions, are controlled by an idle speed motor on the Cadillac. Just one thing does the job of that squid of hoses, and that principle seems silly to begin with to me. A lot of those solenoids boost idle by supplying a little more air to the intake...but they're controlled by vacuum diaphrams which operate on air from the intake... I realize that this is a minimal detail considering the amount it takes, but it's still inferior. Another thing is the temperature control for the carburetor. There's that vent on the intake that will take air heated by the exhaust to maintain a constant temperature intake air... Well, good thing that gets x-ed if we try a CAI system. I've found that it's necessary to have that feature in the winter because otherwise, the carb ices up...and it already has a coolant line going to it in order to prevent that, so it can't do what it's designed to there. They could have easily insulated the carburetor better. They could also have mounted the ignition coil further down the engine bay so it was closer to the distributor, and put the air jet where the coil was or something. It wouldn't make a big difference or anything, but there's no sense in it.

Now as for Cadillac, I do, however, have a strong distaste for their RTV gaskets, air-leveling crap, and they certainly also have a number of senseless designs. One that comes to mind to me is the crankshaft damper. I had to replace the timing cover gasket on mine, and in order to get to that, of course, I had to remove the crankshaft damper. Well, the frame of the car is in the way of the damper by literally less than an inch...so just because of that little bit, I had to drop the engine cradle just to get the damper off. The water pump on that thing is also stupid...made of cheap thin metal so it requires about 17 bolts to stay on without leaking...also, to replace it, you have to loosen the pulley bolts to get the pulley part off, but you can't actually take the pulley off the spinning part of the pump until the whole pump has been removed, because...yes, it hits the frame... I could go into the swearing, grease and blood involved in changing spark plugs on one of those FWD 4.x motors, but I'll leave it at the implication...

Basically, most cars have stupid design problems because they are rushed to produce, or cheap out. As I mentioned before, they could afford to put stainless steel on something as small as a nut where it's obviously going to get rusted. When I did those control arms, I had to use an oxy-acetylene torch on both nuts. The reason I drive a Cadillac is not because I think it's much better engineering, it's because the demands of the business world stomp the quality of pretty much all cars, and I take the Cadillac just because of my personal preference for that style car... I like them roomy, comfy, classy looking, and all I need is enough power to dust some college kid whos parents just bought him a Neon, and he thinks he's cool putting racing stripes and a spoiler on a 4-banger with ground effects and a soon-to-be-salvage-yard car .

[w261w261]

I think I was reacting more to the term "Monkey-engineered." Monkey as a (antiquated) slur term for Japanese does raise some hackles for me, but I understand it wasn't what you meant. Sorry.

My Accord is a fuelie, so I have no experience or desire to become an "expert" on the carbs. Just reading the stories on this site is enough. I've always just bought the arm with the ball joint, the axle with the boot, etc, so haven't dealt with the glories of pickle forks. My complaints with the 3g are relatively minor: the constantly warping brake rotors, the tendency to rust the rear end of the rear wheel arches, and the deeeeep down location of the coolant reservoir. Once I got the Bosal muffler, the Eibach/Bilsteins on the corners, and all the bushings, I'm good to go.

I also have an '85 Volvo 260GLE, with the infamous V6. This thing cost almost $23k in '85, and it's apparent why Volvo ended up selling out a few years later. I refuse to work on the car, because it feels like they never planned on people actually working on it. Bolts that won't come all the way out because they hit a wall, spark plugs buried at the bottom of mile-deep pits, a motor that, described in the owners manual as "don't be alarmed because it shakes...that's normal" or somesuch, the lack of precision drives me nuts, especially after the Honda. But it only has 110k on it, is built like a tank, and, once set up, it never seems to break (a miracle with the 2.8L V6).

Some Mopar engine in the 60's I think you had to loosen the motor mounts to get at one of the rear plugs.

[StressSolutions]

You probably couldn't get the joint out of teh arm because of the clip, although I just pounded it out using a socket as a space for the joint to go in as I pounded.

I too had the blob of rust with no nut or cotter key visible, I just ground the nut off and the tapered bolt part popped out. The joint had already seperated, which is how I knew I needed to replace the ball joint. Yeah, fun stuff.

Never heard that Japenese were monkeys, I had heard black people referred to as monkeys. I got in trouble once for saying that a lousy welding job was done by a left handed retarded monkey. Couple idiots got really upset over that. Go figure.

[w261w261]

<Never heard that Japanese were monkeys>

It was a WWII thing, probably started then. They used to refer to them as "Yellow Monkeys."

[vongiese]

I've replaced many upper rear ball joints on 1987 thru 1989 accords. Very simple - remove upper arm, pry off rubber that covers ball joint nut (if boot is still there) remove nut (if it's a rusted blob may require some grinding and a chisle to loosen the nut) - inslatt Ball Joint puller. Then pry off the ball joint boot to get to and remove the "C" clip below it. Support upper arm on good surface leaving the balljoint free and pound out the balljoint using a large socket as a spacer to fit around the stud of the balljoint.
Pound new joint into place - install "C" clip, pound on boot with another socket/spacer, install upper arm and attach balljoint.

[MessyHonda]

some times you can just get a whole new upper control arm that comes with a brand new ball joint...i was thinking of doing that..but i got some lude arms insted since im going to lower the car in the future.

[ISingBass]

I replaced a rear upper ball joint once on my '87 sedan. The nut was nice and clean so that wasn't a problem, but getting the ball joint out of/into the arm was impossible with the ball joint press. I just took a hammer and whacked the old one out and pounded the new one in.
For my '89, I have just ordered new control arms on eBay (about $30 each including ship). This one does have rusty nuts, so now I'm a little scared...