Agreed! That's why I did not have them do it and bought a new beam with the ball joints and disc brake spindles.
If/when the time comes to put in new ones, I'll be buying a press, and the proper ball joint separator. Two different front-end shops told me they could not or would not do it because it was "very difficult". The other two were small VW shops that claimed it is a difficult procedure because it required a strong, thin-walled pipe to be used with the press. Alas... the disc brake setup on my daughter's '74 standard, daily- driver is a great improvement. Cheers, Nick On 17 Feb, 2008, at 13:31, Mike wrote: > It's incredible that a 5 minute job would charge $70 per! All > you need is > a press and some pieces of pipe to use as adapters, to press the > old ones > out and the new ones in. I bought my 12-ton A-frame press from > HarborFreight for under a hundred bucks. This job is simple and > quick, as > he said, just paying attention to the alignment notches on the > joints. This > will align the slotted raceways to face the proper direction that > will allow > full suspension travel. Put it on wrong, and they'll wear out > quickly and > worse yet, probably end up breaking off while driving! If you lived > near me, > I'd do the press-work for free! My overall advice is that if > you're gonna > do this work, then you should get the tools. The money that you > paid for > the one-time shop fee, would have paid for a press of your own, and > you'd > have it forever for many other uses! Unless you have a friend with a > fully-equipped shop that'll let you do things for free! > > Mike B. > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Damon & Gay" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Air-Cooled Volkswagen Discussion List" <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2008 12:47 PM > Subject: [vintagvw] Ball joints > > >> Hi, >> >> I have never changed just the boot, I always change the ball >> joint. It >> can be done with a good puller to press out the old one and press >> in the >> new. Make sure the notch is in the same place as the old one. I >> used two >> tie down straps to pull the ball joint pin back in place to put >> the nut >> on. >> >> Hope that helps - Good luck, >> >> Damon >> _______________________________________________ >> vintagvw site list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw >> > > _______________________________________________ > vintagvw site list > [email protected] > http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw _______________________________________________ vintagvw site list [email protected] http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw
