Replacing ball joints
 

Survived a pretty hardcore weekend (that dragged on until Tuesday night) replacing ball joints and tie rods. I had the ball joint removal tool, but it kept slipping off the nut until I put my jack underneath the tool, thus compressing it against the nut. Not the official procedure I'm sure, but still highly recommended - nuts came off without any big problems. However, one of the old ball joints just would not come out of the bottom of the strut. No amount of tapping or hammering would help. In the end, had to defer this to my shop.

Similar story with the tie rod ends - one of them just could not be removed from the spindle arm. I ended up drilling it out. It was a straight 12-hour drilling job (I am not joking) that extended over three days. But now all is good and well - I'll get the car back from the shop tomorrow, freshly aligned. I expect some improvement!!!

Cheers

Axel.

The right way would probably be type of press that isolates the two units from the rest of the suspention.

When I replaced a strut I was told was bent by an alignment shop, I seperated them the wrong-2 in the morning at someone elsesplace-way. After trying to pry right next to it and hammer on the strut housing, I finally put the nut on to protect the threads, a wood block underneath the spindle, and jacked it up until POP, it broke loose like nothing happened. I can't remember but I thought it was beveled into an interference fit on the bottom.

If you get work done, get references at Easy or the search of the great posts on this site:)
check what kind of equipment they are using, and watch them when they jack your car up from the proper jack points! You might want to go in when it's not so busy also.
Sears has a computerized alignment rack that is supposed to be pretty good, but expensive.
Don't go to Berkley Auto on San Pablo, though. Baaad experience with them.