Ball Joint Question

[cReep]

Went to get my 97 K1500's front end aligned today and discovered my upper ball joints are toast. $400 to have them replaced and get everything aligned afterward. The uppers have been replaced before, so they are bolted in and not riveted. My searches for replacing them have only turned up replacing stock uppers and everybody whines about getting the rivets out. But my question is how hard is it to replace the bolt in type? From what I can tell, all it would require is putting a jack under the LCA, taking a pickle fork to release the ball joint from the knuckle and unbolting it. Is there anything else to it? If not then I will do it myself.

 

[dirtridinz71]

That is about it for the upper balljoint. Pretty simple to do, should be able to do both sides in an hour or so.

 

[Swims350]

agreed $400 is stupid. it might cost a hundred if that to align it, but $300 in labor for em, shoot bring it here and I'll change em for a hundred bucks.

 

[cReep]

It's a good shop that I've used before. The alignment is only $55. I think they saw the ball joints were shot and just assumed they were the stock ones and still riveted in instead of the bolt in replacements.

Thanks for the help guys. I'll be tackling this one myself.

 

[dirtridinz71]

If doing the upper balljoints I would really suggest doing the lowers while at it, espeically if you dont know when last changed. Nothing worse then doing front end work, getting an allignment and a month down the road having to do another repair and allignment. If possible replace with a lifetime warrenty product like moog or raybestos, they do last longer then the cheaper brands from my experience.

 

[silverado13]

my local shop quoted me $400 for parts and labor to replace both sides upper and lower and all mine are original from 1997, last weekend i attacked the drivers side and eventually got it done but it was a pain without a grinder plus i had to rent the presses, this weekend ill have a grinder and the know how as to how to do it for the passenger, but id really imagine that if they had been replaced then it would only take 1/10 of the time and aggrivation

 

[mdbriggs]

Hey,
Did you have any issues getting the new upper balljonts into the steering knuckle. I am not having luck getting them to align back enough to get it through the steering knuckle

 

[dirtridinz71]

I've had to jack the lower control arm up and down at times to get the upper balljoints to slide into the knuckle. Other then a little work always gone in place without a problem.

 

[Swims350]

uummm can't ya just grab the stud and move it over to line it up?

 

[cReep]

I didn't have any issues getting them back in.