Rear Suspension Ball Joint

[TriX5]

The inner bushings are available on Ebay among others. Yes, they are hard to remove, cutting a groove in the sleeve after removing the rubber innards helps. Has to be done very carefully. Reinstalling is tricky as the new sleeves are soft.....

On my '09 E70 I just went through a rear refresh at 130k starting with the ball joints, integral links, upper forward arms and stab end-links. I did not change the rear upper arms. Used a 20 ton HF shop press to get the ball-joints out for which removing the hub-carrier is unavoidable. The change in ride quality after this was nothing short of spectacular! (I posted some pictures at the time.)

When I was done I took it for alignment and guess what? They complained of the inner bushings, so back on the jack it went. That is how I learned about the inner bushing replacement procedure. I am about to do the same on my e53 once I get the engine back in.

So, yes, I recommend going whole hog but get the HF press and make it easy on yourself. (Taking the emergency brakes off is not that hard.) Check the forward and rear upper arms, suffices to replace only if bad. The upper arms are not cheap and I decided to replace only the forward ones as the RH side was bad (always replace parts in LH/RH pairs).