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Ball Joints on '66 El Help

1K views 6 replies 6 participants last post by  G8GTx2 
#1 ·
So today my son and I were out in the El to have breakfast, order the Jeep GC power steering box, get gas, and head home. All was well until we were about 3 miles from the house.
BANG! then two smaller bangs against the floor. "That's not good!"

We slowed down and pulled over, steering feeling a bit sloppy. Turns out the lower ball joint nut came off of the passenger side, the threaded part almost all of the way out of the spindle, only staying in place by resting on the lip of the backside of the drum dust cover.

Lots of other perils occurred, but a bizarre thing is that the upper ball joint nut turned out to be an 11mm castle nut. ???????
The previous owner said that the ball joints were all new. Are some of the new 1966 El ball joints metric?

Also, I rented the tool to push out the lower ball joint, but there's no way to fit it in position with all of the adaptors and rings. Any others have this issue, and if so, how did you get around it?
Thanks!
 
#3 ·
Ball Joints

Hello Rob:

I replaced both upper and lower on both sides with Moog when I did the drum to disc conversion on my 64 and had no trouble with the tool I rented (borrowed) from O'Reilly Auto Parts. It took and bit of imagination to use the right combination of adaptors but I got them in and have had no trouble. I don't know which set of tools you are using but you might try theirs.
 
#6 ·
If it's in your budget, new upper and lower control arms with tall ball joints from UMI or SC&C would make a world of difference in how that car feels.. Your Jeep box is only half the battle, without 5 degrees of positive caster it's not going to feel like a modern car..

One guy wanted to buy my old lower control arms, I suggested he just get the new stock stamped ones everybody's selling, he said the new stampings are real bad..
 
#7 ·
Thank you for the replies, guys, much appreciated.
I rented the tool from O'Reillys, but it wouldn't fit with all of the pieces in place, so I got out the angle grinder with the cut-off disc and took off the threaded part. It all worked great then.
I put in Moog.
I also had to swap in a Moog end link as ours got bent.

I misspoke on the upper ball nut, it's 18mm. Still metric, still wrong.
The arm didn't look cracked, thankfully, and the area is very shiny. But what a horrible sight that picture is!!!

The thing that still bothers me is that after Ii back the car into a parking spot in the morning, it sits all day, then when I'm leaving and apply the brakes at the first stop sign, there is this loud "Bang" that comes from the front still. I figured it was the sloppy ball joint before, but I double checked it yesterday and nothing is loose.
My drum brakes are a little weird, so maybe the shoes are sticking? It won't bang again until the next day.

Thanks again, guys.
 
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