Ball joints upper and lower

Well I'll have more later, but I'm a little over halfway there, and yeah...the Honda kit was pointless. There's one piece in there I used, but it didn't have most of what I needed and what I did use from it, the other kit I rented also had.

I used the Autozone press and adapter kits. Even with those I didn't have the exact right cups. But they worked. Rather than cut the stud off the top, I just pressed it out by pressing on the stud with the cup that fit best. I guess it could have moved while under all that pressure but didn't. I hammered it out the last centimeter.

Pressing the new one in was easy(ish). I had no trouble keeping it even. It just took a LOT of force to get in. Glad I removed the knuckle, glad I had a vice.

No way just a big hammer would have worked for me.

Passenger side was way harder to get out...finally used the impact on it. Actually forced the ball out of the socket. Then I could finally get the cup from the Honda kit on there.

 

Bummer you had so much trouble. Props for pulling the knuckle, now you know why myself and a few others reco'd it. Could you imagine trying to do everything you did with it still installed? Yeesh.

I said it before, I'll say it again every chance I get: The UBJ on these trucks are worse than any other joint I can recall replacing on any vehicle I've owned.

 

Thanks.

You know, sure the passenger side gave me some trouble, but the job was overall by far not as bad as I anticipated. Aside from a little extra work getting the passenger side out of the knuckle, I had zero complications.

Thanks for all the advice! It's all back together now and hopefully ready for the drive home.

 

Have new OEM UBJs and LBJs to install.

Doing rear bearings now since one was noisy and had play. Definitely needed it.

Recommend replacing wheel bearings @248,000 miles on original bearings while knuckle is out or only if giving indication their worn? Doing the fronts proactively seems like a smart thing to do given the condition of rears....

 

When I started it back up, my ABS light came on. Has stayed on. Could this be as simple as being dirty, and I just need to pull them again & spray them off? Or more likely damaged wires? I haven't seen anything searching around saying to clean them.

 

The ABS sensors need to be in a good line with the tone ring. It's important they were (A) clean and (B) re-installed straight and snug.

I recommend you pop off each one, wipe it clean with a clean rag, make sure you are installing it square and secure, then tighten it down and re-check after. Inspect the wire carefully in the process.

 

My experience, for what it's worth. With the Timmy the Toolman video, you have damn near everything you need to do this job. If you watch that video a few times leading up to the job, it'll feel pretty straight forward. The pressing in and out of the ball joint from the steering knuckle is the wildcard. No matter what it's a bastard. But there may or may not also be complications. My complications were very minimal and not really even frustrating. I was expecting a battle.

I unfortunately have to report that I have no definitive list of the cup/adapters you'll need for the ball joint press. I didn't use a single one from the actual press kit, and there wasn't a complete set of truly perfect-fit cups in the master adapter kit. They fit "well enough" to get the job done.

I'll say that with the Honda kit linked in this thread, the rented ball joint kit and adapter kit, you can get it done with minimum frustration. I used the Autozone kits. There is no cup in any of the kits I have that would fit over the top of the old ball joint, and sit on its rim, which is what you need to push it out. The cup I used in the adapter kit was too wide to fit the ball joint rim, but too shallow to clear the ball joint stud. Which was good, because on the driver side, I pushed the ball joint out of the steering knuckle by the stud.

With the passenger side, the press broke the ball joint, pushing the stud and part of the main body through the outside of the body. At that point, the cup I was using, being too wide for the ball joint rim, was useless. Finally the Honda kit came in handy with the cup that fits the rim but wasn't deep enough to fit the stud. Cutting the stud off is definitely an option to avoid all that stuff.




It's not recommended, but check the internet...for the passenger side I used the impact wrench for the ball joint press. I ruined my friend's vice cranking on the driver side with a breaker bar, and it was tough going. Most ball joint presses are not built for use with an impact, and you'll see many people saying "don't use one!!". And many other people saying "seriously, who uses a ball joint press without an impact??" Weigh the arguments, make your decision. With the compromised vice and the more difficult passenger side (both getting the old BJ out and new one pressed in), I decided to risk the impact. I lubed the clamp threads first.



My UBJs weren't in bad condition. In hindsight, I probably could have gotten away with a reboot. But you don't know till you're in there. My truck has 225,000 miles and the boots were trashed. Cracked open and crumbling. But there was no up/down movement in the joint. YMMV.



So what do you need? The OTC front end kit. Autozone ball joint press and master adaptor (er?) kit. Honda kit. I don't know about the linked Chaos kit. If you're taking off the knuckle (which I now also recommend) and you don't have or aren't willing to use an impact on the press, I don't know how you'd get enough leverage without using a large, heavy-duty bench vice.

 

Did you need all those kits? Advance has a 23 piece kit (#46) with a wide assortment but heard the Honda kit is needed from Orielly's. This job is coming up ....

 

Personally, I wouldn't trust any kit from the AP stores. The reason I bought my kit from HF was because the one I rented was missing pcs and I was balls deep in the job.

I would recommend the chaos kit or something similar. Perfect jig for the job.

And I definitely used an impact on my uppers lol. Not to start it, but once I was confident the post was seated straight...just taaaap it in.

 

@assassin10000 told me I should get the TC kit, and in hindsight, he was probably right. I almost feel like we should have that kit floating around and loan it out around the forum like @FrenchToasty does with the ECGS bushing tool.

 

I did need all those kits. There are only 4 cups that you need, but not a single one of the kits that I found has all four. In the Timmy the Toolman video, he measures the cups he used with a caliper and gives the measurements. Assuming the Tacoma and 4Runner ball joints and knuckle are the same as ours (I'm not sure if that's true), you could piece together just the parts you need from his measurements and OTC part numbers. This is at the end of the video.

There's absolutely a more efficient way to do this, but I can say with confidence that with all three kits you can get the job done. I used the OEM cups in this photos to press the new one it. If you can get the old one out by pressing on the ball joint stud, or you cut the stud off, the next photo shows the cups from the Honda kit that will get the old one off. The shorter, fatter one goes on the bottom, and there are also cups in the master adaptor kit that will work for the bottom.




I wanted to make absolutely sure I had everything I needed, so I got pretty much everything people said I'd need. And if you read this thread, you'll see multiple recommendations "these are the tools you'll need" that then someone else says "those kits didn't have what I needed". It's frustrating. If our ball joints and knuckles are the same, I don't understand how one kit can have the cups one person needs, but not the cups another needs.

I described how the job went for me. The ball joint press is required. But not one of the provided cups in that kit is the right size. So you'll only use the press. So you still need the right cups. That's where the master adaptor kit comes in. But even with that kit, I still used the Honda kit on the passenger side once I broke the ball joint.

The cups needed to press the new ball joint in aren't the same ones needed to press the old one out. So even the Chaos kit isn't the one-kit-to-rule-them-all. To me it looks like what you need to press the new one in.

So...if someone wants to do this job with a wide assortment of cups on hand then post the part numbers and dimensions (in case someone wants to buy a different brand), that would be helpful. I started doing that, but then sort of modified my approach as I went, just trying to get the dang thing out, and lost track.

 

I still think cutting off the threaded portion with a cutoff wheel makes the UBJ job easier. First time I did it, no right cups, took me literally 3hours to do both sides. This time when I replaced my UCA's, no right cups, but I cut off the top portion and it took me no more than 30min a side.

 

Thanks much for your time on this. Been prepping and feel the same way. Frustrating to figure out what worked or didn't and what will when it's time. Decided to start measuring and seeing what kit has what ahead of time. And since planning to swap them...do have cutoff wheel ready if needed.

 

Also trying to decide at 248,000 miles if should proactively replace the front wheel bearings and hubs. Don't seem to have issues with those yet. But with the knuckle off seems like the time to do it especially if can't pull the UBJ easily in the future without cutting it off!

 

@ToyotaDude I'd wait on the front wheel bearings if the current ones are still good. The knuckle is easy to pull. You will need a press to get the bearings out. I used a harbor freight 20t for mine. You would also want a full selection of steel plates to go along with it. My bearings split and stuck on the hub, which was a real pain (I just bought new hub from Toyota, I'm unsure what the quality of the aftermarket stuff is). Timmy has a good video on it.

 

I recently went through this too. I had to take me knuckles off for other reasons, and at 208k miles figured new bearings would be a good idea while I had the knuckles off. You do need a shop press (I used the Harbor Freight 20T press), and I used a combination of the press plates, some old rotors, and some steel bars for all my setups on the press. Shop press also made the upper ball joints a breeze.

 

Yota1 has preassembled spindles/hubs

https://209yota1.com/products/pre-assembled-steering-knuckles-add-hubs-pair-tundra-and-sequoia/

$1100 w/ refundable core charge. Not too bad honestly. ANNDD you can upgrade to the larger LBJ found in the later model FGT

 

Yep. I brought my angle grinder just in case, but decided not to use it. I don't figure I'll need to do this job again on this truck, but if I did, I'd probably cut off the stud.

Never a bad idea to replace bearings at that mileage. I wouldn't do as "routine maintenance" if there was no play or noise, but if you have the hub off and the motivation/$ to do it, I can't think of good reason not to.

But the advice here is sound. My Tacoma has 330,000 miles on the original front bearings. Rears have been replaced because one actually went out on me, but I haul a trailer with ~300lbs tongue weight plus a bunch of crap in the bed of the truck. I'm sure I was regularly over the weight limit. So I probably wouldn't say "my truck has x miles so I'm going to replace the bearings" as a stand alone job. But I'll admit, when I had my knuckle off, I realized "huh...guess I could have done the bearings". But to be honest, getting the knuckle off is no big deal. Getting the UBJ out of the knuckle is the tough thing. And that's not necessary for bearings. So I wouldn't say that because you're that far in, now's the time to do bearings. It's not hard to get that far in.

 

Thank you. I did what I should have done before posting the question, and went out and looked at them. I cleaned them since I had them out again, but the driver side hadn't been snugged down completely, so I'm sure that was it. ABS light flickered off after driving a few miles.

 

Never hurts to post about it, though. Someone else may find this via Google and it’ll save their ass. Good on ya for not being afraid to ask.

 

Looks like @MT-Tundra thoroughly won last weekend's race to ball joints and shocks, but I figured I'd throw in my experience with the UBJ's to add to the info already out there, along with a real word of caution about the AutoZone kits.

I was able to do it using only 2 loaner kits from AutoZone, the OEMTOOLS ball joint press (Part #57023) and the master cup set (Part #57310). For this to work I did cut the top of the old ball joints off with a grinder. I was kind of dreading that part thinking the hard steel would put up a fight, but a fresh cutting disk went through no problem. Here's the combination I used with a couple notes:





The 27310H receiving tube was a perfect fit, and 27310F installing tube was just tall enough for the install, but needed to be centered carfully. With 27310K on the bottom of the joint for install, the inner diameter of the cup is a bit larger than would be ideal, so it's also important to make sure it's centered to be seated evenly.

As for the word of caution, on the first one I was installing, I tried to use 27310J pictured below. At a glance, it was the most accurate fit for pressing in the new joint, but I realized it was immediately going in crooked. I tried every trick in the book to correct this and couldn't get it sorted, until I realized that cup is angled, and seemingly designed to correct this exact situation. I tried to make it obvious in the picture, but when digging through the cups it can be hard to notice the maybe 2mm offset on this one cup.

The high side is indicated by a notch, which can be positioned at the 'least pressed in' side of an off-kilter joint or bearing. This is a super handy addition when you know what it's for, but an easy mix-up to make when it's one of only 2 cups that even remotely fits that application. Hopefully this will be of use to someone looking for a one-shop solution.

 

This is great, thank you for posting this info. When i was looking to do my UBJ's i had found a few recommendations on here on which kit to use, and I ended up renting a kit from Advance Auto Parts, and it worked ok. It's possible i was just not recognizing the easiest combination of tubes to get it to fit right, but the number of extensions that i had to use made it feel kinda sketchy. To me it looks like you were able to get it done in at least a safer way with this kit.

 

Ah, the puck! I couldn't find any use for either of them but looks like I didn't spend enough time looking. This is why it's nice to have a friend help, instead of doing jobs solo. Over the years I've found I can get things done, but there's often an easier way staring me right in the face, and I don't see it.

I will say, even though you went to the same store and rented the same kit, yours looks a little different than mine...but might not be.

I wish I still had the kit in front of me to compare. Then I could confirm that people don't need the Honda kit in addition to the rented kits. I thought I did, but I probably just missed something. When I put the kit back together, I found you can ignore all the numbers and just use the letters on the parts. They're lettered something like A through K, and the case shows where each letter goes back.

 

The "puck" is used for multiple reasons:

One side will usually fit over the ball spindle to hold downward force central to the UBJ and to isolate the spindle so it doesn't pivot.
A cup from the kit will usually fit into one or more of the grooves in the other side of the puck.
The puck usually also has a detent or ring that allows it to center into the hole in the jaws of the press.

This gives you a ton of variation in what you can do and is ultimately makes it a universal kit.

 

I remember at first I was going to use one of the pucks for pressing the new joint in, but however I was trying to use it, there was a little play. I found a cup that seated more securely on the bottom of the joint than the puck. Doesn't matter, cause it worked, but I'm sure if I had played around with the pucks a bit more I would have figured out the right way.