I've been working on my 1987 Chevrolet (Chevy) G20 Sportvan lately. I'm busy replacing the upper and lower ball joints. I took a Sawzall with Diablo metal cutting blades to the ball joint stems and disconnected the tie rod to remove the steering knuckle. Then I used the chisel bit on my air hammer and angle grinder to get the rivets off of the upper ball joint. But I used a screw driver and hand chisel to pry the uppers off of the upper control arm while that was secured to a vice and that wasn't a good idea because it warped the front a bit. It may or may not matter much? If it does, I may still be able to doctor up the upper control arms at the upper ball joints with JB Steel Stick?
But I've never done ball joints before and since I'm replacing both sides at the same time, the sequence of events is getting me. On one upper and one lower, I've been getting the boots pinched and torn. I got another upper, but I'm out of money for a new lower now. It's been slow work, but I'm eager to get the front side of the van back down with all four wheels on concrete. I don't have a garage and I'm sure it's not making my nice neighborhood look good having it all pulled apart for weeks on end?
I was using a ball joint puller kit from the auto parts store, but I just now discovered that I could have gotten them free by removing the tie rod from the steering knuckle and using a scissor jack rated for 1.5 tons upside down to get the lower one to pop out.
The nothing on the left side is mounted yet. But on the right side, I used a ratcheting strap with one end wrapped around the steering knuckle while the other end was hooked to my car in order to line up the bottom ball joint hole with a straightened stem on the new lower ball joint. If the steering knuckle isn't just right and the stem turns, it seems that it could cause the boot not to mount and pressurize right when it sits into the lower control arm?
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