The secret to removing ball joint nuts discovered.

[Noel]

I'm approaching the tail end of my winter suspension rebuild project on my 1980 911SC and needed to removed and replace the original ball joints on my car. I waited to buy the ball joint castilated nut socket and new nuts until I knew I needed them for sure. It turns out, I didn't.

I clamped the a-arm into my workbench vice after soaking the nut in Kano Aerokroil for an hour. Then heated the nut with a propane torch for a few minutes. Next I used a one foot long pipe wrench with a one foot long pipe on the end. The wrench was only able to grip about 3mm of the edge of the bolt, but it was enough. After bouncing my 160 lbs of body weight on the pipe wrench a couple times, both nuts freed. The only evidence of removal is a few small teeth marks on the outside of the nut from the pipe wrench, but the nuts are reusable.

You can use the same method to retorque them. Using the one foot long pipe wrench with the extention pipe slid down to make the entire wrench about 1.5 feet long and applying my body weight to the end of the pipe will get the torque just past the 185foot/lbs requirement (Since 1 ft/lb is equal to one pound of force applied to the end of a one foot wrench).

I hope this write up helps others and saves them money also.

Noel

[ewave]

You can also stand on a scale and apply down force to your wrench. Subtract the read weight from your original weight, and multiply this by the length of your wrench to get any torque you need. I did this when replacing the castle nut on the 915 transmission for my 86 Targa I used to own.