How to Replace an Upper Ball Joint

hey guys chrisfix here today we're gonna change out the upper ball joint on this 2002 to 2009 Chevy Trailblazer or GMC Envoy this will also work for a 2004 to 2007 Buick Rainier a late-model oldsmobile bravada and the 2003 to 2008 isuzu Ascended this is gonna be our new memo tech replacement ball joint comes with all the necessary hardware to replace everything they even give you an extra zurich fitting here if you don't want the ninety degree in one when looking at our ball joint here you can see the rubber is completely torn and as this car moves around on the road if you turn the steering wheel if you hit bumps it'll squeak if you want to know how to tell if your ball joints are worn out at the end of this video I'll have a link to another video that shows you how to diagnose ball joints I'll go through all the different steps so you can tell if your ball joints are good or bad so now let's check out the tools we'll need to replace this ball joint so here's everything you're going to need to do the job we have a torque wrench we have a breaker bar we have our socket set in this case we're going to use a ten millimeter and 15 millimeter socket we have our extension two flathead screwdrivers ratchets 15 millimeter open-ended wrench we have a 35 millimeter axle nut socket you can use a hammer or a rubber mallet blue loctite is optional for the bolts also want a grease gun to grease the ball joint we have our ball joint and then finally you're gonna need a ball joint press kit you can rent these for free at any major automotive parts store so in order to remove the upper ball joint it's actually connected to the knuckle not the control arm I've done a video where the control arm has the ball joint built into it this one is the opposite way around the ball joint is built into the knuckle so we're gonna have to press it out of the knuckle in order to press it out of the knuckle we need to tilt the knuckle backwards so that we have enough room to get our press in in order to tilt the knuckle backwards we're gonna have to undo the axle nut on this truck in this case it's a 35 millimeter so we're gonna have to get in here with a flathead screwdriver to pry this off and that gives us our axle nut we have a 35 millimeter socket here and that'll fit right over the axle nut like so you can see I'm using a nice long breaker bar so this doesn't take a lot of force to remove it and the tire is on the ground since I'm not using an impact wrench I'm trying to use basic tools that you guys will have at home so you can see that was actually pretty easy it's only on 103 foot-pounds this is an easy axial enough to take off make sure this sockets a deep socket because if you just have a shallow socket the axial stud here is going to be too long and you'll just hit the bottom here and you won't be able to get it on all the way so we just broke this axle nut loose but we're also gonna take it off right now with the car on the ground just makes things easier sometimes these are a little bit difficult to get off even after you break them loose you can see this is hard to turn and with the car jacked up in the air you'll just spin this axle now with the axle nut off we could Jack the car up now you want to crack all the lug nuts before you lift the vehicle up now let's lift the truck up so now we can take the lug nuts off take the tire off now what we're gonna do is we're gonna put our axle nut back on and tighten it until you can see the edge of the stud the axle stud now I'm just gonna take a hammer I'm gonna hit right here I'm just gonna break this axle free once it breaks free and it moves just take the axle nut off next we have to loosen up the ABS cable you can see this chuck has ABS and the ABS wire is connected to the control arm so we don't want to hit the control arm and yank on this cable in any way now's a good time to remove this term over this you just got to flathead screwdrivers you don't want to break this clip so you can see right in there one screwdriver goes right here to like bend that clip that way and then your other screwdriver will go right in the bottom to pry it off we're also gonna have to loosen up the brake line because the knuckle is going to be moved this way so what we're gonna do there's two ten millimeter bolts here that hold in the brake line you can see the brake line is held in back here and we just need to take off that one and then on the other side there's that one the other thing it's gonna loosen up is the ABS line so this is a ten millimeter bolt that's one so on this other bolt here you're gonna have to use a little bit of an extension because the ABS holder right here gets in the way okay that's number two now this will come right off and now we don't have any tension on the brake line and ABS line now we can remove the pinch bolt that connects the ball joint to the control arm so with this pinch bolt you're going to need an open-ended wrench and you're going to need a socket and they're both 15 millimeter just get it on there like that now since this is a pinch bolt this metal actually bends in so you're gonna take a flathead screwdriver or a pic or something and fit it in here hammer that in which spreads that pinch Bowl out so now we can just pop up the control arm so with our ball joint loose up here our knuckle is free to move around but we don't want to put pressure on the CV joint here so we don't want to pull on the CV joint if we pull straight out the CV joint in here has pressure on it outwards and you don't want to damage the CV joint in here and uncouple it or anything so the reason why we take the axle nut off is because we want this to move inwards so we're not pulling the CV joint out so now we're going to be tilting our control arm downwards and as we do that what we're going to do is we're going to push this inwards so that the CV joint doesn't get extended good and you can see that's the angle we're looking for so when you have the ball joint press it's not hitting your paint now here's the ball joint you can see this ball joint is shot it moves around way too much and not only that there's upwards and downwards flight listen to this so this ball joint is shot it should be smooth there should be no play upwards or downwards not only that this boot is ripped and inside here it's all gritty there's all sand and stuff so the ball joint obviously needs to be replaced but we knew that already I'm just showing you anyway now what you want to do is want to get a flathead screwdriver and just dig around the edge here and just get all this dirt off if you have brake clean you could use that and what I'm doing is I'm just cleaning around the edge here to expose this snap ring you could kind of see the edge of the snap ring right there you might want to put on some eye protection because what you're gonna do next is gonna get your flat-head screwdriver and get get a hammer and you're gonna tap the hammer on the edge of that snap ring so that's what the edge of the snapper looks like there's an edge here and if you go around the back here you can see there's an edge right there and that just holds in the ball joint after you press it so we need to take that out before we could press the ball joint out just lightly tap and then you can see on the far side here this will come right out just like so I'm gonna push this back in because I want to show you another technique now a lot of times what happens is when you use a screwdriver and especially on these types of snap rings you could push it this way with the hammer and it just spins the other end of the split ring will spin with it so what you do to get around that you get equal length screwdrivers and you put one on one side and one right on the other and you hold them both here and just hit them both with the hammer and since you hit both sides with the hammer it forced it straight out instead of spinning it and then you can just get your screwdriver and tap it out the rest of the way so there's that snap ring the new one we're putting on is a better design it has the holes for your snap ring pliers and it also goes around more so it holds it in a lot better okay so now we're ready to press this ball joint out so we have our ball joint kit if you want to see how to use this in depth so that you know exactly what you need to do for any ball joint I have a video on that and that video link will be in description below so at the end of this video you can check that out I'm not going to get too in-depth on how to use this it's actually pretty simple so now when we're pushing the ball joint out the ball joint is gonna get pushed downwards so here's the new ball joint I'm gonna use that as an example we want something that pushes on this edge here this metal jacket right here right where the rubber attaches we want to push it downwards and we want something on the bottom that goes around this whole piece that'll catch it so it pushes upwards against the metal so this is gonna work for the bottom you can see the diameter of this fits around the whole ball joint without touching it it's only touching the edge of the knuckle so I'm going to be pushing against the knuckle and then the ball joints gonna fall in here now this piece is going to go over the stud and you can see it's going to push down on to the ball joint right on the metal here and it's gonna force it downwards but since the stud still sticks out we have to put a cap on this and then we're gonna press right onto here so unfortunately the hole up here is too big and the ball joint press is just gonna fit in here and press against the stud we don't want it to press against the stud we want to press against the outside casing and the ball joint so we're gonna have to add a cat which goes on here and then now the ball joint press could press on the cat so instead of using this larger one I went with a smaller one because it's not as long and I was running out of space up here to make the sandwich fit I was gonna use this one so you guys could watch the ball joint actually fall into the press here but you'll still get the idea and you'll still see it fall through now I have this piece of cardboard that I duct taped that's just gonna go around the stud right here that's going to protect the paint so if we hit the finish by mistake it's actually protecting it and it won't damage it now we're gonna still be careful I'm hanging onto this and try to prevent it from hitting the side here but that's just used as extra protection so we don't damage the finish so now let's crank away so we just tighten it clockwise you can see as I turn this that ball joint is getting pressed right out you can see that get up there you go that gap just closed and the ball joint just popped right out of here so when I take this off the ball joint will come right out just like so and this thing is shot so now what you're gonna want to do is you're gonna want to clean this off you want to make sure that the inside here is nice and clean so that when you press the new ball joint in you're not scratching it and it goes in smoothly to clean this surface I just have a little bit of sandpaper and that's nice and clean do not sand the inside here the inside here should be nice and polished finish there should be no debris or anything in here you don't need to sand in there but I would stand underneath all the standing does is make sure that there's no debris that gets pushed in here with the new ball joint so here's the new ball joint we're gonna have to press the ball joint in around this edge so this metal jacket edge right here is where the ball joints gonna get pressed against and it's gonna get pressed with the stud facing upwards just like that so we're pushing up on the ball joint against that metal edge and down on the knuckle forcing the ball joint up so you can see we're gonna be pushing against the back of the ball joint here and we have this Cup that fits right on the edge and that's going to go on the bottom like that and then on the top here we have something that fits around the whole ball joint right here and you can see it's not touching the ball joint at all there's a nice gap so when you're pressing up you're not pressing down on this ball joint at all and then we could put this cap on here and again the stud isn't getting touched there's enough room for this to come up you can see the inside here is curved and that's how we're gonna set up our ball joint press for pressing this back in so now let's crank away so you can see it's almost closed up against it and you'll know when it's closed up against because it'll be impossible to turn the wrench now the wrench is getting really hard to turn so that means that's in all the way and you'll know if it's all the way in because the edge here where you have to put the snap ring will be completely flush just like that so the kick comes with a snap ring like this but unfortunately I don't have my snap ring pliers with me and I'm working remotely today so I'm gonna put the original clip back in it's still nice and straight and it still works just as good tap it in and then when it's in on the edge and you can't tap it in anymore just get a flat head screwdriver and tap the flat head screwdriver and it clicks in just like that now we can put everything back together so now we take our ball joint bring it up to the control arm pull the control arm down I'm gonna have to try to line this start a little bit then it could take a flathead screwdriver and open up that pinch nut wedges it open just like how we took it off and actually give us enough room to push it down like that and once we get it down far enough and just pull that out then we take our screw that comes with the kit and it comes through and once that slips through that means we have the right clearance in here if you can't get this screw in you probably need to push the stud up further so once it goes through we could connect the bolt and we just hand tighten this for now we'll tighten it up and then once it starts getting snugged up you have to torque this down from 30 to 40 foot pounds in that range good now we have to get the brake line holder on here and that just screws on right there just hand tighten this one in go to the other side and tighten that one in tighten it down once it snug give it a little bit more of a turn that's good tighten this side down that's good now we have to get our ABS line in remember the clamp throws it down and that just snaps in like that this one just snaps in up here like that okay so now we get our axle nut and we're not going to tighten it down all the way because we can't since the car is in the air but we could get it on here enough and we'll just tighten it down and once it gets next to the hub here you're not gonna be able to tighten it down much more just like that now it's just gonna spin now we could put the tire on and then put the car on the ground now with the car on the ground we could torque the axle nut so surprisingly the axle nut is only a hundred and three foot-pounds of torque that's the torque range okay so the axle nuts torqued now we're gonna torque down the lug nuts to a hundred foot-pounds with all these torqued got one last step you should we line this up and when you're done make sure you grease the ball joint you could use a grease gun and put it right on the grease fitting and add some grease hopefully this video is helpful if it was give it a thumbs up if you're not subscribed or consider subscribing up on screen are gonna be a couple of how-to videos you click on the screen or you can find the links of those videos in description below also in description below are the links to the chrisfix Facebook and Twitter pages check it out

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 2,330,014

Rating: 4.8991871 out of 5

Keywords: Ball Joint Press, Ball Joint Replacement, Upper Ball Joint, Upper Control Arm Ball Joint, Chevy Upper Ball Joint Replacement, Trailblazer Ball Joint Replacement, Chevy Ball Joint Replacement, Chevy Truck Ball Joint, Envoy Ball Joint, Pressing a ball joint, Ball Joint Removal, Replace worn ball joints, Squeaky Ball Joint Replacement, front ball joint replacement, How to replace ball joints, how to replacea a ball joint, Envoy ball joint replacement, GMC ball joint

Id: l3SJwitttwo

Length: 15min 46sec (946 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 20 2014