Welcome to the Colorado AR-15 Shooters Club Discussion Forums.
PB Blaster is great, and works really good on heated bolts. Smokes like a mother, but seems to be drawn into the threads.Originally Posted by Great-Kazoo
Just finished shocks, brakes, and leaf springs on my Ford Excursion last night. Hard work, but a huge sense of accomplishment when done.
David - CS, CO feedback
It's a measure of the civility in this country that no ones seems to fear constantly pissing off the people who own lots of guns.
Thank you for saying so. I assume that most people on here are more capable of this stuff than I am, and learned all this stuff when they were 16 from their dad or in shop class. I didn't, and have always been a bit envious of people who can repair or customize things. While this isn't the best step by step thread (your repair manual should be able to fill in the gaps) I thought I'd take some decent pictures and document here and there along the way for anyone else like me.
With that said, I need to dump some photos in here and ask some questions. I'll try to come back and label the photos later. My question is about the non-serviceable end of the CV joint. I have the inner joint pulled apart and cleaned, and my service manual warns about mixing different types of grease. So, do I just try my best to flush out the non-serviceable (outer) joint, repack it with the provided grease, and re-install? Stand by for photo dump.
About to tackle the upper and lower ball joints and the CV boots. I've removed things in the order I thought would be most helpful to me at the time. Quick side note, on the Amigo/Rodeo/Passport, you can't just take the knuckle off, you must disassemble the hub in order to even get to the brake discs. This makes the front brakes a several hour job (for me anyway) instead of an hour or two job.
Here I've disconnected the steering arm.
I've removed the caliper and hung it on a piece of wire attached to the shock tower. This relieves any tension on the brake lines that you leave attached.
This is a pickle fork (wife refers to it as a Dinglehopper) and it is used to separate ball joints. Remove the cotter pin from the bottom bolt of the ball joint and loosen the nut a bit, DO NOT REMOVE all the way. Place here:
Pound the pickle fork in with a sledge hammer. The ball joint won't usually just pop off, you'll have to pound and pound, long after you think you should have stopped before it will actually separate.
Once the joint separates, you can remove the bolts holding the plate to the upper control arm. Oh yeah, the pickle fork will ruin the boot on the ball joint, so have a new ball joint ready to install. There are other methods of removing ball joints (especially on unpowered axles) but since this is a 4wD, the front axle is in the way and a pickle fork is the preferred method.
Here is a shot of the driver side knuckle from the back, looking toward the front of the vehicle. You can see that I've temporarily reattached the upper ball joint, just to hold the knuckle in place while I work on the lower ball joint.
All the pounding kept vibrating the brake pads off, so I decided to remove the caliper bracket altogether. Then I decided to keep going with removing the hub and brake disc just to get it all out of the way to access the axle. The method shown in the photo is not the best way to hold the axle from spinning.
This method of holding the axle is easier on you, and doesn't risk damaging the threads with metal on metal contact.
Skipped a step here because the photo of me removing the snap ring was not in focus. Remove the three screws and then pull use a pick to loosen and remove the ring behind the screws.
Here are the components holding the hub and brake disc onto the knuckle.
Once those are out of the way, it's a simple removal of the three 13mm bolts to remove the disc shield.
I'm impressed with your ambition.
I don't know you very well but I kind of pictured you rather inept around tools.
Here you can see that both ball joints have been removed, and the knuckle is still attached to the vehicle by the 4WD vacuum actuator, so I hung the knuckle off to the left side. We can see the exposed CV boot now. The boot closest to the camera is the outer boot. The outer boots on both the driver and passenger side are torn all the way through at the small end, and both inner boots don't look like they have much life left. Neither axle is popping on turns, so I thought I'd just replace the boots only. In retrospect, it wouldn't have cost much more to have just purchased remanufactured axles and replaced the whole unit as a whole. For some reason I had assumed it would be easier to just replace the boots, but it is a lot more work that way.
In order to remove the axle shaft from the vehicle, there is a snap ring on the inside of the collar of the inner boot. I had to look at the picture in the manual 10 times and mess around with the axle for several minutes before I figured it out. The axle is completely covered in grease, obscuring everything, so cleaning some out is helpful. Also, the inner joint slides in and out a good 4 inches or so and it took me a while to figure out I needed to push the axle in, wipe away grease, then I could pick that snap ring out with a small flat blade screw driver. Here is the removed axle. I'm pointing to the outter side, where the brake disc and hub go.
This is the inner joint with the previously mentioned snap ring. You'll need to clean all of this grease out to inspect everything. Have fun (new boots recommend using warm soapy water).
Here is a shot of everything removed and cleaned up. That snap ring holds the inner race onto the axle, but once removed I found it didn't just easily slide off. I used a block of wood and a hammer to gently tap the race off the end of the shaft. Your manual will be more specific, but you gently use a screw driver to pry the balls out from the inside out, then tap the race off the end, then the cage can slide off as well. It is a good idea to clean the cage and race while still on the axle, and mark them so you can put them back together in the correct orientation.
Race sits inside cage, balls between to allow rotation, grease to lubricate everything and make sure it doesn't bind up. The entire purpose of the boots is to keep the grease in, and the dirt and grime out. Once your boots are torn, the grease leaves, dirt comes in, and all that shiny smooth metal gets torn up and the whole joint quickly destroys itself. This is the cause of the clicking you hear when turning one way or the other when your CV axles go out.
Here is a shot of the outer (non-serviceable) joint with everything (grease included) in place.
So back to my original question, do I just try to flush the outer joint out as best I can and pack in the new grease that was provided with the boot? I imagine the grease provided is going to be similar, if not the same as whatever is in this one.
Last edited by Irving; 11-10-2016 at 07:48.
Kind of, this stuff takes me a LONG time to do. When I was younger, I would get frustrated and either break things, or just give up and put everything back together and take it to someone else. Now I've learned to take my time, but it costs me well...time. The first time I did the front brakes on this Amigo, it took me something like 9 hours to go through the driver side, then only two hours to do the passenger side. I'm sure there are better ways to do all this stuff, but I don't know them so I just take my time as to limit the amount of stuff I screw up. Up until this, the most ambitious car projects I've done were changing the timing belt, water pump, and alternator on this Amigo, and dropping the transmission and changing the clutch and slave cylinder on my Cavalier. **Who puts the slave cylinder INSIDE the transmission?! I'm looking at you, late 1990's Chevrolet.**I'm impressed with your ambition.
I don't know you very well but I kind of pictured you rather inept around tools.
Assembled.
New boots in place and full of new grease.
Greased and ready for reinstallation.
Axle reinstalled with new boots and grease, new ball joints reinstalled. Those paying close attention may notice that the upper ball joint top plate is now installed under the upper control arm, and originally it was above the control arm. This is to help achieve proper alignment after lifting the front.
Personal note to myself so I don't forget: I need to pick up a crimp tool and properly install the cables to hold the boots on, AND I need to pick up a grease gun and make sure the new ball joints are properly filled. They came with zerg fittings (that I had to install) and the upper ball joints are VERY stiff so I'm a bit skeptical that they've been properly greased.
New ball joints are usually extremely stiff, even after being greased. That is normal. First time I did ball joints I returned the replacement joints to the store assuming they must be defective. The replacement sets were all the same. My dad (40 years as a mechanic) laughed at me when I mentioned these "defective" ball joints.
Okay, thank you for posting. I thought that might be the case.
I also forgot to mention that earlier I had suggested using a parts cleaner to help clean all the grease out of the CV joint. When I actually looked at the instructions, it says that the parts cleaner leaves a residue that is incompatible with the grease, and warm soapy water should be used instead. Oops. If anyone catches anything else like that, please let me know so I can edit the thread. Don't want to put out bad info.
I called around to some parts stores for a crimp tool, and none of them had one and they told me to go to Harbor Freight. I wasn't able to find what I needed there, so I just bought a clipper and filed the sharp edges down to make what I needed.
The one on the left is the filed version. Not great, but it worked well enough.
Here you can see before the crimp in the background (finger) and an after crimp in the foreground.
Everything on the driver side has been re-assembled at this point. I'm going to knock out the passenger side, then do the torsion bars, which should hopefully be the easiest part of the front end. I am planning on building some quick detach links for my front sway bar, but I just noticed that the sway bar is contacting the passenger side shock. I'm going to have to look into that more closely and see if I can find a solution. The quick detach links will be an inch or two longer, and that may fix the issue.
I about set my garage on fire out of rage after just having finished torquing down 12 nuts, while holding the hub from spinning, then looking down and noticing a snap ring I had forgotten to put back into place. In addition to having to clean the CV joints and repack them, I also have to clean and repack the hubs on each wheel as well. What a monumental pain in the ass. I know that some people are talented enough to change CV axles on the trail when they break parts, but having to remove the hub and try and keep all those parts clean while on an off road trail sounds like a nightmare.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
