Fortunately, I was at a stop light and just a couple of feet from the entrance to a YMCA. I gingerly backed the van up maybe thirty feet and turned into the YMCA. Again, I was lucky. There was one parking space open right at the end of the entrance. Another thirty feet and I was parked with hopefully minimal damage. I paid eighty five dollars to tow it home.After getting it home, I checked to see how bad the damage was. Fortunately, there was only a broken upper ball joint. The wheel and tire were ok. I asked about which parts to use in an earlier thread and decided to go ahead and give XRF a try. I called them and ordered the parts. I will put my XRF review in another thread.
I replaced the upper and lower ball joints, drag link, idler arms, tie rods,and sway bar links. The job wasn't to bad with the upper ball joints being the most difficult to remove.
Left wheel with broken ball joint.
Right wheel with good ball joint and you can see that I have removed the sway bar link.
Right wheel with lower ball joint removed and wheel seperated from upper ball joint. In the bottom of the picture, you can see a big hammer. To remove the bottom joint, I just beat it out. The Autozone tool didn't fit for removal. I used the pickle fork to seperate the ball joints.
Right wheel with lower ball joint being installed. I rented the Autozone tool. It didn't work for removal, but was fine for installation. Notice on the ratchet that I have a pipe extension for better leverage. I found this invaluable for helping me get this job completed.
Right wheel with everything installed.
Overall, this wasn't to bad. Now that I know what I am doing, this could be done a lot quicker. The biggest time consumer was the upper ball joint. I tried a variety of methods that have been mentioned here, but it still was difficult. I got them off by cutting them with a Dremel and then using a chisel to break the joint off. The bottom joint was simple once I realized that it was easiest to just sledgehammer out. The other parts are pretty easy. The sway bar links, idler arms, tie rods and center link were straightforward bolt off/bolt on.
I must confess that I was nervous about this, but after getting into it the job wasn't that bad. Anyone should be able to do all of this outside of the ball joints in a couple of hours. Doing the ball joints will add time. The bottom joint can be done quickly. A big hammer can have the bottom joint out in a couple of minutes. With the Autozone tool, you can have the new one on in about a hour or less. The upper joint was a pain and will probably take awhile your first time out.
I mean literally no more than two or three minutes and I had it out. I could have saved a lot of time knowing this instead of fumbling with the tool.