hydrallic press needed for changing ball joints?!?!

[aa35199]

just replaced my busted tie rod end and now its time to move on to the crummy ball joints any ways my haynes repair manual says that I need to remove the control arms and take them to an auto motive machine shop and have them remove the old ball joints and then intall the new ones with a hydrallic press. Confused I went to my local autozone to ask if they had such a machine. When I asked the clerk about it he had no idea what I was talking about. He said I should have no problems doing the whole thing in my drive way. Any body here know what I should do? I don't want to rip out my old ball joints because I'm afraid my car will be undrivable while I sort out this hydrallic press business.

*Whoops just realized I posted this in the wrong catagory, sorry.

[ September 14, 2005, 02:02 AM: Message edited by: aa35199 ]

[Rabid Dog]

Haynes is correct. You should have done the ball joints first though, because now you'll have to remove the tie rods again. Some people drill/hammer them out, but to be honest I'd rather spend 20$ at the machine shop to have all 4 changed.

Why are you doing this? Are you rebuilding the entire suspension?

[xX315Xx]

you could use a ball joint press. You should be able to rent one from autozone. It's a massive c-clamp with cups that need to be used to press the ball joints in and out.