[Vwdiesel] Follow-up Ball Joint Extraction

[Val Christian]

Several months ago I posted here in frustration over ball joints which
were nearly impossible to extract from the front wheel hub casting.
This was on my A2 91 Jetta, with 200K+ miles.
I'm pretty stubborn (no, not another shameless passive IR gun lead-in),
and I spent allot of time on the ball joints.  Here's what I did..

-beat on it.

-spread the hub clamp (that wraps the ball joint) with a drag link.
Hammering in the draglink tool, and then cranking on it with a
breaker bar appears to work.  At least at destroying the drag
link too.

-used all sorts of penetrants and other potions.

-used a rock smashing chisel (5 foot long) as a prybar,
leveraging against the hub casting and the lower control
arm.  Mostly bent up the lower control arm.

-did more of the above, using hydraulic jacks to preload
everything, and then beat with a 3# hammer.  Again, mostly
bent up (more) the lower control arm.

-applied heat to ball joint through bolt hole, using
jewelers tip on aircraft torch (2 cu ft tip).  Heated
several cycles.  After applying the giant toothpick
(that rock smashing chisel), I eventually got the right
side off.  I estimate I spent 8 to 10 hours.  Probably
should have used more force, or replaced the ball joint.

-left side attacked with vengance mechanically.  Then tried
heat.  No avail.  Upped to a 4 cu ft tip on torch, and managed
to nick the pvc boot on CV joint (replaced with rubber style).
The PVC boot was OE, so after 200K+, I suppose it was ready for
replacement anyway.

-higher heat approach wasn't yielding results, so on a nightly
basis, I saturated the area with PB penetrant for three weeks,
until I had a chance to go after things again.  No results.

-Applied giant toothpick , with the multiple hydraulic jacks
to the problem, and heated the clamp on the hub several times.
Again hammered drag link tool into the gap to help spread it.
Between heating and spreading with the drag link, things started
moving with hammer blows.  It seemed like an inordinate number
of blows, but eventually the ball joint seperated.

I replaced the strut cartridges, and did the brakes (more on this
later) and reassembled everything.  The front end was not measured,
but the alignment behaves like I didn't change it.  I did have an
unexpected outer CV joint boot replacement, but those are cheap
parts ($7).

The struts rattled when driving in the grass, but not on the road.
Took off the strut tower top nuts on the shock/strut and tightened the
intermediate nut with a screwdriver and hammer (no spanner the right
size, and I didn't want to grind one from a socket).  Drove again,
and tightened again a couple of iterations.  Things are now quiet,
and everything appears to work OK.  And the front end appears
to still have very good, if not excellent alignment and handling.
I'll measure the camber and toe one of these evenings, just to be
sure.

Thanks for the suggestions and support.

Val