Quote:
Originally Posted by stiubhartach
I spent two days trying to get mine out. I tried every technique and several tools. I finally gave up and bought the right one. It was out in 5 minutes.
This is the one I bought. It's bigger than the same style from harbor freight and grand auto. It might be the same as the Honda tool.
https://shop.ktcautotools.com/produc...puller-e53-e83 |
I had a very similar experience on my 2001. Ended up using just the right tool, similar to the one shown there, and it made it easy. But I think the current problem is not with that part of the job.
That tool will separate the control arm from the ball joint. When I did mine, that was the hard part.
But I think for this issue, the control arm has already been removed from the ball joint, and now the task is to simply
remove the ball joint from the knuckle, where it is pressed in lightly and secured with two Torx screws. For my 2001 with ~170k (all in CA), it was no problem at all. But it sounds like for many others it practically welds itself in there.
Regarding the grinder plan (and some other more extreme ideas), I would be very careful about damaging the knuckle. You'd hate to finally get it out of there and realize you gouged and deformed the hole so the replacement will not fit.