would a handheld grinder work in place of the hammer and chisel part of the process?
Using a steady hand of course!

 

With a steady hand, yes. The problem is that some of them may be quite difficult to get to without getting everything out of the way first.

 

Having just done mine, I would recommend popping the lowers first - they were by far the hardest to get out.

I broke the job up into two days too. It was rigorous work, Even with my 18volt DeWalt Drill and Cobalt split tip drill bits.

Furthermore, it is worth your hard work and expensive tires to have the alignment done very soon after such... whenI got mine to the shop the toe was out and the camber was WAY OUT!

 

Good point about the alignment, it is always a good idea to save those tires. I did read somewhere that technically you don't need to do an alignment after just replacing the ball joints, but I would recommend going ahead and spending the $50-80 to get a proper alignment done. I replaced the tie rods as well. With doing the tie rods, you definitely need to do an alignment.

Not sure about popping the lowers first. If you mean using the pickle fork to separate it from the steering knuckle, then you may be right. But if you mean replacing the lower ball joint first, then I would say make sure you get the steering knuckle off too. It just allows so much more room to work with. If you are drilling out the rivets, you can't get a drill in there with the knuckle on.

 

Im trying to get the upper ball joints in but the metal flange thingy is about .030 too large for the hole. is the ball joint supposed to fall in? Do I hit it with a mallet? or do I separate the two pieces and put one up top and one below?

 

It should fit flush. Are you sure you got the correct part?

 

i did mine the other day, and i ended up taking the entire steering knuckle off first, i just took out the cotter pins, blasted the nuts off, took thetie rod off the knuckle, took the axle out then the knuckle came off.. this made it very accesable. then took my good old air hammer with a chisel tip and ripped the rivets off and replaced all four joints in four hours! the DIY article deffinitly gave me an idea of what to look out for while doing it. The article was EXTREMLY helpful!!

 

Air tools definitely cut down on the time required!

 

Great thread. I'm new to blazers but not new to wrenching or welding/fabrication.

I got conned into helping an acquaintance changing some. he's been working on it for over a week with no luck and I took my impact and pneumatic pickle fork over, popped the knuckle off (pulled the unit bearing off first and tapped out the stub shaft) got the uppers are replaced in a couple hours. I drilled out one of the rivets on the lower before I ran out of time and had to leave.

I must be missing something because I don't see how the bottom gets pushed out with a standard ball joint press (i own the c clamp usual type). The lower A (control) arm seems to have the sheetmetal cap over the zerk fitting that prevents pushing the joint out.

He rented a hammer drill with a chisel bit and mangled the crap out of the rivets (he's been working on it for a week 6hrs a day and hadn't gotten the calipers off yet...just trying to get the rivets off with chisels and drilling from the side and who knows what else). So i can't tell exactly whats rivet and whats control arm.

I know I must be missing something because all over the web and even in this thread it shows the steps I've talked about above (removing the knuckle), followed by removal of the rivets, then the next thing you see the ball joint is magically replaced. I'm a fan of figuring things out but I'd like to just go over and get it done rather than fumbling around trying to reverse engineer the arm so can someone talk me through---idiot style---removing the lower.

Yes, i searched first and thanks for any help!

 

I don't know how much clearer the pictures above could be... They show every step of the process. Those 4 rivets need to be chiseled/ground/drilled out and the ball joint will be free. Do you have questions on a particular step in the first post?

Now if your friend has mangled the control arm to the point where you cannot tell which is which, you may want to get a whole new control arm.