Ok so I spent the last 5 hours trying to get this damn coil spring spacer installed but ive ran into a pretty serious and extremely frustrating snag. The bolts for the tie rod and upper control arm ball joint wont pop off. I tried using a pitman arm puller, an air chisel type thing with a specialty tapered fork looking thing, and I even tried heating up the area to help break the bond. Its honestly like the 2 metals (the bolt and the control arm) have fused together, I cant get it to budge at all. I called a local offroad supply store and they said I should just cut the bolt and just buy a new upper control arm...right

Has anyone else ran into similar issues? or does anyone have any suggestions on how to remedy the problem?

 

pb blast spray it on let it sit. spray it on again let it sit. repeat several times. also get an impact gun and get the bolt to start to spin in the housing. thats a normall start then cutting the bolt and removing the control arm may be possable. but honestly the easier wat is to jack the truck off the control arm and unhook the shock. then just unbolt the lower control arm from the spindle and the spring shouldnt have any tention left on it. or very little if it does.

 

Ok, first of all, did you get the nut off the BJ threads? Im assuming so but just cannot pop out the BJ shaft from the spindle hole right? Make sure the spindle is facing straight out as it you were driving straight forward and get the UCA and LCA parallel to the ground. Anything other than this will cause binding with the BJ shaft and spindle. Take some PB Blaster and soak it and then either use the pitman arm puller OR put the nut back on and get it flush with the threads and then use a hammer to hit it. That way you dont screw up the threads.

 

I always soak them with pb blast ect , and hit it with a good beater !!!! 4 to 8 lbs and have never had a problem

 

It takes a pretty good hit to pop those suckers loose, luv taps just won't even scare it. I use a 3lb sledge and smack the nuckle just hard enough not to break it.

 

Ive had good luck with tie rod pullers. the largest one