Front lower ball joints

[firefighterwhite89]

I have two new front lower ball joints. The ones pressed into the bottom of the spindle. I was reading that they were a pain to get out but i'm pretty sure that most of those people were just using hammers or something to get them out. I have access to a 20 ton press but i'm kinda worried the spindle may break where the ball joint is. It looks awfully thin there...

[knifemind]

Do not worry, it will not break. I always use a 3 lb sledge to pound the joints out, and I have probably done about a dozen of these over the years on multiple cars. You will just have to pop out the inner hub seal or the ball joint will hit it on its way out. Then pull the snap ring and pound away. A press is better for installation ,but I always use a smaller hammer ( with an appropriate sized socket or something to spread the impact) for that too... just be careful not to damage the top surface of the ball joint, especially the kind that have a grease fitting on the top.
Changing the ball joint itself is the easy part of the job...takes literally minutes if the knuckle is out of the vehicle and you have an appropriate snap ring plier.

[firefighterwhite89]

Do not worry, it will not break. I always use a 3 lb sledge to pound the joints out, and I have probably done about a dozen of these over the years on multiple cars. You will just have to pop out the inner hub seal or the ball joint will hit it on its way out. Then pull the snap ring and pound away. A press is better for installation ,but I always use a smaller hammer ( with an appropriate sized socket or something to spread the impact) for that too... just be careful not to damage the top surface of the ball joint, especially the kind that have a grease fitting on the top.
Changing the ball joint itself is the easy part of the job...takes literally minutes if the knuckle is out of the vehicle and you have an appropriate snap ring plier.

Thank you for your info!

[NXRacer]

So I'm having a problem getting the lower ball joints out of a knuckle. Its out of the vehicle. I have a ball joint removal tool like this


But I'm pretty sure it's made for an upper ball joint.

Where are the snap rings? I don't see any and I thought I cleaned it fairly well. Where do you hit it to get it out? I've been beating all around the edge with a hammer and I don't see any movement. Maybe I just need a bigger hammer?

[MessyHonda]

If you already bought your replacements you can see where the snap ring goes. Even on my original ball joints I was able to take them off with no problem. I always recomend Moog ball joints. I had some made in china 9.99 ball joints and they failed with in the first 20k miles.