After a little help here please ...

I spent the weekend replacing the CV boots on my car, after reading a bit here and poking around I managed to get that done easy enough except for the whole "putting it back together" bit ...

I've got the drive shafts back in ok, but I'm struggling with getting the ball joints back onto the lower arms (I've done both sides). Because the suspension is fully extended I can't seem to lift up the disk/hub assembly enough to get the ball joint back in place. I used brute force and a block of wood to get it apart (and the same method to get one side back on) but I'm buggered if I can get the other side back on - surely there must be an easier way??

I've also managed to bugger up the boot on the ball joint, so now I have to replace one of them too :-(

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Wrxpc

Damn. Good luck. I tried removing my ball joints so I could install a roll centre kit and I just could not knock the bolt out of the control arm after removing the split pin and nut. getting the ball joint out of the hub was easy though.

If you are having trouble getting them back in you can try first aligning the ball joint up to the hubs as best as possible and putting a jack or large block of wood under the control arm and lowering the car onto the ball joint. the weight of the car should make it move into place. Im not sure if this is a recommended method though.

__________________
RS Liberty - Because WRX's are only good for parts...

yup. just be careful when doing that as it may slip, and the spring will force it down onto anything below! you can also use large hose/jubilee clips to compress the springs, or lots of big cable tie's! depends how desperate you are!

I`ll lend you a ball joint removal/separator tool for a 6 pack......couldn`t be easier with one of these, ~$30 to buy one.

As for getting back together.....undo your swabar D shackels(both sides) and let the sway bar flop around, and or stop being a weak prick it ain`t that hard, use your foot to push arm down or lie underneath and pull it down while someone else moves hub into place.

to get the ball joints back in remove the stabiliser bar link bolt, and just push the lower arm down. Easy, or if you are super strong you could push down on the lower arms with the stabiliser attatched...

Also most subaru ball joints i have seen just have a 14mm bolt going through the side of them. easy to get out once the bolt is removed

__________________
Version 6 STI

Thanks guys, undoing the sway bar bolts made the lower arm move much easier, I had it back together in 10 minutes after that and put the sway bar bolt back in when I lowered in down.

It seems good - except for a slight scratchy metal-on-metal sound when I get to about 60k's??? There is no noise below this speed (and it goes away when I turn), maybe I bent the metal plates behind the disks when I was trying to get the damn hubs back on?

Cheers,

Wrxpc