Upper BJ Snap Ring Not Seating

[MunkeyTX]

I'm soooo close to finishing up the front end refresh on my '98 4Runner, but the upper ball joints have been the bane of my existence!!

I'm pressing the new upper BJ's in via CajunTaco's method of using a modified pitman arm puller, as a pusher.

The BJ looks to be fully seated into the spindle, and the pitman arm puller is actually beginning to bend the 'ears' of the spindle adjacent to the UBJ hole. The snap ring will seat into half of the circumference of the UBJ groove, but the other sides next to the ears will not.

I cannot apply any more force to the puller, as the tip is eating into my 'pushing pad' and bending the metal.

I'm tempted to just leave it as is, tighten the castle nut to spec, and forget about it.

What would y'all do??

 

[Stick Figure]

What would y'all do??

I would but an actual bearing press. Takes no time at all to press the joints in straight.

 

[toy4rner]

R&R Upper and Lower Ball Joints - TTORA Forum

I just did mine this past week. I used a 3 arm puller rented from autozone after snapping an arm off the cheap harbor freight 3 arm puller. I had an old ball jnt press which would not work because of clearance issues with the spindle arm. BUT, I was able to use some of the hardend steel parts from the kit to do something similar to the ttora link above. You really don't need to remove the spindle to press the upper jnt in. I was going to modify a pitman arm puller, but decided to try the 3 arm to press in the joint before taking it back. The snap rings did take some fanagleing to seat, but it wasn't too bad. Hope his helps

Pete

 

[fightman80]

I'm really glad I found this thread this morning!!! I'm going shopping for the tools to do the UBJ AND LBJ today, and this is just the kind of info I needed!