Tension Strut Balljoint - What to do if it's fighting you.

[nick325xit 5spd]

So, I'm fixing up my in-law's old X5 for a friend who needs a vehicle. It's an ugly one, but my friend (with some help from me) basically 100% refurbished it mechanically about 55k ago.

Anyway, one of the last items on the punch list was the tension struts. I got spoiled by my 100% carolina X5 and figured that they'd be easy since they weren't *that* old. I was wrong. After many hours of hammering, chiseling, and deploying the air hammer, attempting to get the angle grinder in there, etc... Well, I comprehensively failed to make progress.

What I should have remembered up front is that it only takes about 15 minutes to pull the entire damned knuckle off. And when you've got the knuckle off, you can hit the balljoint square with a hammer and that bastard will pop right out.

Anyway, the RF tension strut took me more hours than I'm willing to write here. The LF tension strut took me 45 minutes from start to finish, including about 5 minutes of attempted chiseling and R&R of the entire knuckle.

So learn from me. If the balljoint fights you, pull the stupid knuckle. Don't burn a bunch of time fighting it. Even if you don't have all the tools I do, it still won't take that long. (Fun fact: I used five different impact guns in this job.)