I just did these exact joints and one popped off with a simple pry with crowbar. However in my haste ten days earlier when I put the new tension strut on, I hit with the impact without torque and I clearly over torqued onto the Morse taper pin and stretched the eye of the strut possibly cold welded because no amount of force was working to remove it.

I was replacing ball joint so it didn't matter how hard I banged on it so I got a pickle fork in there and pounded until it wouldn't go in more and it still didn't come loose.

Eventually I put floor jack under the knuckle and 40-50 more hits with 4# copper hammer and it eventually came free.

That was the first one.

To prepare for the second I bought a 3/4-16 grade 8 bolt and was going to use a plate from my bearing press and was going to push down from bottom of shock tower.

I can tell you from experience the little ball joint separator would have broken in half long before mine would have come loose.

I suspect similarly the joint which is only supposed to have 80 N·m applied was likely over torqued like I did: I did it to myself!

Persistence will pay off you'll get it off.

If you can. Find a position to apply a bolt from bottom of shock to the strut you can apply a lot of force to preload then hit from the side to "ring" the bar they usually pop right off with that method.

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2011 E70 • N55 (me)
2012 E70 • N63 (wife)