Lower Front Ball Joint Replacement

I ground them off from above, its tight and you have to use the grinder "end on" but you can make out the rivet shanks once you grind the head off and get down to the wishbone. once you get the round outline of the rivet shanks, I put a couple of house bricks under the wishbone to support it and then used a round punch to bosh out the rivet. They are a quite a tight fit and take some knocking out.
Just make sure your wishbones are ok without any major corrosion, I would hate to replace the lower joint and then have to do the wishbone a year later.
When I did mine (on my new car) I also put new wheel hubs on complete with upper joints too. One bearing was showing signs of wear so I decided to do the whole bloody lot, Track control arms went on too.
My first TF I had from new and I had a good idea of how long the parts last so I just changed it all as everything went on my last car between 60 and 80K. My new to me TF had done 63K so I thought while the spanner were out get stuck in and do the lot.
It was not too bad to change the wishbones btw, did them both in a day. Half of that time was spent doing the front subrame mounts as they were rotted away badly.
Did the rear a couple of months ago, they were pretty bad too!

Sundance

Way to go Sundance I did the same a couple of months ago. Upper and lower ball joints ,TRE's new SS front mounts, ARB drop links, full front poly bush kit and full front end rust prevention. Plenty more was done while the front end was stripped down and cost a small fortune but now the way she drive's is worth the bloody knuckles and tears and swearing and nights spent working on her. Epic job but well worth doing in the end.


:beer: :beer: Steve

stevew wrote: Way to go Sundance I did the same a couple of months ago. Upper and lower ball joints ,TRE's new SS front mounts, ARB drop links, full front poly bush kit and full front end rust prevention. Plenty more was done while the front end was stripped down and cost a small fortune but now the way she drive's is worth the bloody knuckles and tears and swearing and nights spent working on her. Epic job but well worth doing in the end.


:beer: :beer: Steve

Yeah Stevew, I do concur its a big job, but I am glad I did it and hopefully I will not need to look at the parts again. I even gave the new hubs and wishbones a second coat of paint to help prevent corrosion. I have also replaced a rear hub and done some of the bushes on the rear to, but this was after my GF spun the car and busted the rear nearside wheel and hub and linkages.
Here are the droplinks I used on the front, made by Dunlop and they are extremely well put together and have no slap in the rose jointed knuckle!

and a pic of the finished job.....

and finally, why you should check your subframe mounts....

Sundance

Well, what a *&%^%^ job!

Finally completed it using the Sundance method.

It's now failed on a friggin' o/side upper ball joint :bang:

Suffice to say, the local garage is doing that!

Like I said, when one goes, the rest aint far behind!
Well glad you got your lower joints done ok, The upper ones can be a bitch to crack, think I used a bit of scaffold pipe to get the leverage on the stilson handle when I did mine, with my bro holding the hub with another lomg bar to stop it turning against me!
Hope it al gets passed ok now....the sun is shining and you need to be out and about!

Sundance

willow1 wrote: More like "Way to go" to you Sundance. Jeez, that's a shit load of work you've done. I'm never going to take all that on I'm afraid.

Yes, thought about the grinding option. Still might have a go.

Did you grind them from underneath as others have stated? Be better me thinks if I could do it from the top. Did they punch out easily after the top/bottom was removed and was there any damage to the holes?

I'm thinking of drilling down from the top only a short distance and then wacking the top of the rivet off with a chisel??

Having failed my Mot with this problem, and a few others, i ordered up 2 new wishbones. While waiting for them to arrived i checked the how to :nonod: Found this thread and ordered the ball joint. Will replace wishbones during the winter months as there is to much that can give me problems.
I decided to go with the drilling and grinding from the top. I only drilled halfway through the rivet then ground off the tops of the rivets. The rivet on the right of the picture is difficult to grind so it's easier if you grind the 2 on the left first, then knock the rivets out with a punch. Grind as much of the right side, you can then move the ball joint around which moves the rivet head around, giving you better access to get the rest of the rivet top off. I then used the punch to take the last rivet out. Hope this helps.

Good info.:yesnod:

I've just fitted new front wishbones. Well... when I say I, it was actually my garage man who told me what a complete pain it was, :bust: Mainly the problem was getting the big bolts out without ripping the captive nuts out first. To which I replied,'Why do you think you did the job rather than me?':whistle:

Smart move :clap: The thought of dropping the rear of the front sub-frame and breaking bolts scared the life out of me :omg:

What a job!
Finally managed to bash the rivets out in-situ using a block of wood to force the wishbone down and a steel tube under the rivet head. Even then it was not easy and far from it in my experience. I have yet to measure the diameter of the rivet where it grips the wishbone but my impression is that that diameter is greater than 8mm. Certainly a standard 8mm drill shank is a loose fit. Similarly the hole in the replacement ball joint is also closer to 8.5 mm but not 9mm in diameter. Consequently the ball joint can be “swung” forward or backwards a little as the 8mm bolts are certainly not a “neat fit”. That means that the castor angle can vary as the 8mm bolts are tightened.
So does anyone know of a way of setting the castor angle?
I’m sure it is not meant to be adjusted but that is the situation.
It may be possible to ream out the innermost of the three holes and fit a larger diameter bolt but in order to rotate the joint to the correct position there must be some way of setting it first.
Any ideas please?

I was lucky enough to find two new wishbones for £60 so haven’t done this on a MGTF but have replace the ball joints on other cars. I have always found the rivet holes to be the same as the new bolts.
However there are plenty of owners that deliberately elongate those mounting holes so as to be able to adjust both camber and caster. The fact that the bolts are a loose fit is not that important, the ball joint is prevented from moving by the friction imposed by the clamping force of the three bolts. Just as wheel studs only clamp the wheels to the hub without transmitting any power.
Going from memory the distance between the centre of the “balls” in the top and bottom ball joints is about 8” or 200mm. This equates to a movement of 3.5mm for every degree of movement. If you attach the new ball joint to the wishbone and measure the fore and aft movement I think that you will find the ball itself moves about 2mm (1mm each way from centre) this is less than 1/2 degree of castor and insignificant, even double is still only just over 1/2 degree. If you centre the fore and aft movement you will be virtually spot on and well within manufacturing tolerances. The inwards and outwards movements is too small to contemplate, probably less than 1/10 degree. Hopefully this will reassure you that all is well. If the movement is greater than I have suggested then come back again with the measurements.

Yes, I see what you mean and unless I can find some “official method” to check the castor angle what you suggest will be the way forward as I’m not about to drop the front suspension.
For the record I have measured the old ball joint holes and the remains of the rivets.
A 8.5 mm drill shank is just about size for size with the holes in the old ball joint, and I measured the holes at 8.46, 8.5,, and 8.6mm using a digital caliper. So I’d say 8.5mm hole.
I then tried to get a measurement on the rivets just below the head where they would have been lodged in the wishbone. Those dimensions were somewhat larger, and in no particular order those measurements were 9.26, 9.42, and 9.07.
So it is easy to see why an 8mm bolt with a maximum thread OD of 7.97mm can “rattle around” a bit leading to several degrees of freedom front to back and consequently on castor.
At the head of this topic are images of an assembled wishbone and a ball joint. On those images can be seen a rib that lies “in-line” with the outline of the end of the wishbone. Could that be a guide as to intended alignment?

I am not sure if you typed what you meant but if you bolt the new ball joint into position you will be able to determine how much movement you have fore and aft. I am guessing that it is between 2mm and 4mm, don't think in degrees just mm, although the bottom ball joint may rotate a couple of degrees this doesn't translate into the caster changing by a couple of degrees. what ever the total amount of movement is the centre is where you need to be.
If you stand back and look at it clearly the top ball joint is fixed and cannot be altered so any fore and aft movement is the lower ball join following the radius of the top ball joint. In my first post I guessed the distance between the ball joints to be around 200mm which is the radius of any fore and aft movement of the ball joints. A simple calculation shows that the circumference of a circle is 2 times the radius times pi, in my example of 200mm radius you get 2 times 200 times 3.142 (pi) equals 1256mm. If you divide 1256 by 360 you will find that one degree equals 3.5mm. If your ball joint is moving 7mm then you have just one degree of movement from the centre position. Despite all these calculations you will find the centre of the fore and aft movement is the correct position. The same figure applies to the camber, to alter it by one degree you have to move that lower ball joint by 3.5mm. If you measure the distances between top and bottom ball joints then I will give you more precise measurements, or you can buy a simple camber and caster gauge like this one;
Magnetic Gauge Tool for Car Truck Camber Castor Strut Wheel Alignment Angle Buy It Now
Although it looks crude it is very effective. Also bear in mind that the camber on a TF is plus or minus one degree from 4.50' so from 3.50' to 5.50' so not a very precise setting anyway.