Upper ball joint removal ?

Yup, that was me. I couldn't for the life of me get the UBJ to pop out of the UCA. I beat that bitch like it owed me money. I ended up using a ball joint press in a really awkward way to get it to pop loose so I could pull the spindle out.

 

I've had about 75/25 luck with whacking any TRE, pitman, idler, BJ outside its joint and actually having it drop out, where it's 75% fail rate and I'm grabbing the puller.

It almost feels like those stereogram pictures where, if you cross your eyes just right, you see a 3D image? Like, there's a trick to it, but after probably 4 decades of trying, I've sure as hell never been able to get it more than once or twice, and I couldn't repeat it twice if I tried.

 

Seems I had to tap on the bottom of my control arms to get the upper ball joint to separate from the control arms.

05Dub, when you do have it out, since I read you have the HF available to you, you can use that to easily press your upper ball joints out of your spindles. When I did my wheel bearings I swapped my upper ball joints as well. I used a press plate and a ball joint cup on the under side of the upper ball joint, then used a socket on the top of the ball joint and pressed it out with the HF press. I did cut the threaded section off the upper ball joint to fit the socket over it.