This meant I needed to remove the hub from the car. In order to do this, 3 ball joints need to be disconnected. There are the two ball joints on the top and bottom of the hub and then the tie rod end. The first hub came off relatively easily. I had to cut one of them because it was spinning and the nut wouldn't undo. The second hub was more difficult. I got 2 of the tapers to pop but the 3rd one refused to pop. After much hammering I broke down and bought a ball joint separator. It was cheap and Chinese, but it did the job.
Of course this wasn't the end of my troubles. Once I had the hubs removed, I still needed to undo the dome. This required a sturdy place to secure the hub. Off to Home Depot to buy a bench vise. Of course I had no where to mount said vise so I bought a 2x6 and bolted that in between a couple studs in the garage. Good enough I thought. How wrong I was...
The vise was sturdy enough, but the hub had no flat surface. Every time I tried to apply any force, the hub would just spin out of the vise. I tried mounting it to a piece of wood, but the caliper mounting holes ended up too close to the edge of the wood so it cracked. I had finally run out of patience and employed the services of Don at the local gas station. He had the tools and the space and after he secured it in a 3 ton press, a quick turn of a wrench and the ball joint domes were loose.
Sounds like everything is all roses right? Well I have failed to mention that removing the hubs caused some dirt to get in the wheel bearings so now I have to pull those apart and regrease them. Oh, and one of my tie rod ends has a torn boot so that has to be replaced.
So, to sum up, here is what's left to be done:
- Ball joints need to be lapped (smoothing of the mating surfaces)
- Install new ball joints
- Grease ball joints
- Replace the tie rod ends
- Refurbish the wheel bearings
- Oh, and the original reason I started this whole project; replace the rotors and p