Ball Joint Grease Hole

Well, even without daylight savings time here, it's still light, so I shot some photos of my '88 B2200.

Here's my ball joints, passenger side, with the wheel turned fully to the right (for access for photos):


Upper


Lower, with notch cut to allow access to the grease fitting on bottom BJ. I think he did a better job notching than I did.

His photo (his driver side), looks like his wheel is turned full left.

So I just did the passenger side ball joints today. On my lower ball joint as I was tightening up the 4 bolts to the lower arm, I managed to strip 2 of them. I was using a torque wrench and not even up to torque yet.

Do you guys think I could just use a new bolt and throw a nut under there. Or, do I need a new ball joint?

You strip the heads or the threads? You might be able to drill them out and use a new nut and bolt. I would be suspect there is a problem with the threaded holes if you were not near the torque limit. Unless your torque wrench is off, the spec is 60-70 on lower arm and 80-116 on the steering knuckle for 86 and later.

Well, if two of the bolts threaded OK, I expect that the manufacturer "tried" to cut threads so the existing bolts could be used. If you stripped the threads of the bolts only, I'd get new bolts, maybe clean up the BJ threads with a tap.

If the ball joint itself is stripped in those two holes, I'd tap to the next larger size (even non-metric !!!) and use new bolts to match those.

I can't see anything too wrong with using longer bolts and locling nuts, but I would still drill out the existing holes and go 1 larger unless the same bolt size now readily passes through the now-larger BJ hole.

The threads stripped on both the ball joint and bolt. I put new bolts in. I only got them up to about 50 foot pounds before they started spinning again. Good idea cusser, I should just tap the next size up.

Instead of starting a new thread, I have a quick question about my tie rod ends. I just finished installing the last one today. I got the alignment pretty good, but after I tightened everything up I've realized my steering wheel is out of alignment. Is it bad to pop out tie rod ends or ball joints a few times and reuse them?

Now - you don't need to pop out the tie rod ends to align the steering wheel. You just loosen the four clamping apparatus and turn the two tie rods the same amount, so one tie rod shortens and the other lengthens by the same amount.

Ah. So that's why the threads are in two different directions. Damn. I could not get one of the nuts off the adjusting sleeve no matter how much torching and penetrating oil I used. I'll have to pop a tie rod end do make this adjustment. Thanks for the tip.

Why not just adjust the steering wheel? Or let the shop that does your alignment will fix it.