Quick question!!!!!

[PaulT]

who's done lower front balljoints on a 5th generation?

Relatively easy?
PITA?

my 90 needs one for inspection. Waiting on a callback from the garage with their est.




(woohooo post # 13,000 in the celica forum )

[PaulT]

guess I"m the TN guinea pig!

[flex-appeal]

looks that way... lemme know how it goes

[PaulT]

Originally Posted by flex-appeal

looks that way... lemme know how it goes

IT SUCKED!!!!

I was doing this on the floor in my dad's garage.

Idealy, if I had a spring compressor, it would have gone much faster. Once the old balljoint was off, the strut had it's own ideas about where it wanted to be. Ended up pulling the axel out of the tranny. Fought with it for a while to get the axel lined up properly while trying to get the wheel assem lined up for the new balljoint to attach to the arm.

The old balljoint was OEM, 185k miles on it. So rusted that the castle nut wouldn't move even after putting heat on it, so I cut it off, then ground down the remains to get the old one out. The 3 that attach to the arm came off with just a little heat.

Lessons learned.
Struts hate me, have a spring compressor and take the damn thing out next time. Would have cut my time to less than 1/2

Don't forget the piclefork at work

Don't start the job on a day you have to be at work

Don's stop short of pulling into the garage all the way in case you have to leave to go to work because you didn't listen to above.

Good news it I got it done and got to work 4 min early (yep, cut it that close), and learned valuable lessons to share with y'all

[flex-appeal]

Thanks for the tips - its always worth knowing what to expect with these things! I'm glad you got it all sorted out in the end.

[fredk]

and never take your only car apart without a way to go get more parts

[PaulT]

Originally Posted by fredk

and never take your only car apart without a way to go get more parts

My Bronco and Dad's F-250 were both there. That's why I do most of my work in Dad's garage, besides having more space