Steering knuckle ball joints

JLGALL1 · Apr 12, 2018

Hi all, just finished servicing my Disco 2 & thought I’d give the front suspension a shake down for any wear & to my surprise the upper & lower ball joints on the steering knuckle (driver & passenger side) have vertical movement when prying with the front end jacked up (no horizontal movement). It’s at least 1/4” up & down play, is this normal for Disco 2?

I would have expected any movement be it horizontal or vertical to be bad & mean the ball joint needs changed?

Thanks in advance!

jamesmartin · Apr 12, 2018

any movement means they need changing,once tightened theres quite a bit of tension applied to the joints so any play doesnt usually show up straight away,they take some pressure to remove and refit dont use heat else youll bend the axle arms

brian47 · Apr 12, 2018

+1 ^^^^

James (@jamesmartin ) is right, DO NOT USE HEAT.

IMO unless you have access to the kit to press the old ball joints out and the new ones in I would leave it to a garage to do for you.
There's a load of dismantling to be done to get at the ball joints, so while you're doing the job, personally I would consider changing the CV joints and anything else while you've got everything pulled down and can get at them.

JLGALL1 · Apr 12, 2018

Thanks for the replies, I did read about about another forum member who replaced the ball joints only to find that the up & down movement was still there. Not sure if he just bought faulty ball joints or if this up & down movement is to be expected when checking with the wheels off the ground?

JLGALL1 · Apr 12, 2018

I.e. should I be checking these ball joints another way - with the weight of the car on them?

TomCa7 · Apr 16, 2018

Mine just failed MOT on lower ball joint. Tested jacked the truck up and then observed the joint as he lowered the weight back down - it was really easy to see that there was some play in it.

I decided to tackle the replacement myself (did upper and lower whilst it was all off) and it was the job from hell! I had a ball joint press tool and it made not a blind bit of difference, they were in there for good and had no intention of coming out. 2 days of grinding, drilling, and beating them with a hammer I finally got them both out. In the end I used a slitter disk to take as much of the protruding housing off as possible then beat them with a hammer and a socket to knock them out.

Putting them back in was just as much of a pain in all honesty. Top one went it relatively easy without too much of a fight but the bottom one was a nightmare. In all it took me about 3 hours to get it fitted and then a day to recover from hitting my hands constantly with the hammer.

All in all it took me about 3 days from start to finish - but it was definitely 3 days of fighting! Checked once the job was done and there was no movement in the ball joints at all - as it should be. Any 'play' in a ball joint should be a MOT failure unfortunately.

My advice is a) buy the ball joints and get them done (they are about £10 each of internet) and b) get a quote for someone to do it at a garage and decide if it is worth spending the money or not. I didn't get a quote from a garage but quite frankly it is one of the few jobs I have done on the Disco that I wish I had made someone else's problem.

brian47 · Apr 16, 2018

TomCa7 said:
Mine just failed MOT on lower ball joint. Tested jacked the truck up and then observed the joint as he lowered the weight back down - it was really easy to see that there was some play in it.

I decided to tackle the replacement myself (did upper and lower whilst it was all off) and it was the job from hell! I had a ball joint press tool and it made not a blind bit of difference, they were in there for good and had no intention of coming out. 2 days of grinding, drilling, and beating them with a hammer I finally got them both out. In the end I used a slitter disk to take as much of the protruding housing off as possible then beat them with a hammer and a socket to knock them out.

Putting them back in was just as much of a pain in all honesty. Top one went it relatively easy without too much of a fight but the bottom one was a nightmare. In all it took me about 3 hours to get it fitted and then a day to recover from hitting my hands constantly with the hammer.

All in all it took me about 3 days from start to finish - but it was definitely 3 days of fighting! Checked once the job was done and there was no movement in the ball joints at all - as it should be. Any 'play' in a ball joint should be a MOT failure unfortunately.

My advice is a) buy the ball joints and get them done (they are about £10 each of internet) and b) get a quote for someone to do it at a garage and decide if it is worth spending the money or not. I didn't get a quote from a garage but quite frankly it is one of the few jobs I have done on the Disco that I wish I had made someone else's problem.

Yeah, I know I shouldn't gloat and say "I told you so", but .......

I told you so!

At least it's done now.

TomCa7 · Apr 16, 2018

I was working along the lines of "how hard can it really be"

Main problem was once it was all stripped down it was too late to do anything other than carry on ... 100% worth making it someone else's problem thats for sure

Steering knuckle ball joints

JLGALL1

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jamesmartin

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brian47

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JLGALL1

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JLGALL1

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TomCa7

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brian47

Well-Known Member

TomCa7

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