hi tankowner
I just went through this with my 2005. I found those two ball joints were a chore.
In researching what I came across were these tid bits that others posted as help:
*soak it with PB Blaster overnight
*use pipe wrench to twist the ball joint base within the knuckle by grabbing it from the bottom
*use an air chisel to impact rattle lose
*find right sized puller that can grab ball joint's nut shaft and pull downward
*remove the steering knuckle and then attack
*careful not to damage the ABS sensor, bearing etc, so no torch heating
Perhaps others here will have some other suggestions or tricks
I also found that a lot of posters here talk about all of the front end suspension parts being really easy to change but when you probe for details often they re-use the ball joints. I would agree that other parts on the front end were reasonable to change but the ball joints coming out of the knuckles were chore.
I will admit that it is the one thing in years that I took my car to a local small indy shop for. In the end he used an air rattler (like an air chisel with a u shape attachment) with 3 minutes of impacting to rattle them loose while pulling them downward. Took him 30mins per each ball joint to remove. The longer I watched the better I felt about paying a bit.
Hoping yours might come easier than mine (90K miles). I will say that changing out the ball joints was worth it. I had roughly a week with all new bushings and the old ball joints. Once I had the new ball joints in there the X tracks like a car again and the rattle which I could hear over speed bumps which dealer and previous owner never could find are fully fixed now.
