can u give me step by step on how to change upper and lower ball joints, and the pitman arm. 97 s10 blazer

 

Honestly for safety concerns take it to a shop, if its not something your used to doing it can be dangerous... I`m not being a wiseass either , I have the special press to remove the lowers out of the ctrl arm and i still dont wanna do them in my driveway.. The uppers ya need an air chisel to hack away the rivets that hold them in, and then ya need ball joint forks for the ball joints to break loose from the steering knuckle... If ya dont have that stuff it can get dangerous..

 

I'm gonna agree, take it to a shop, if you don't have the right tools and experience, it's not worth the danger/time. Spend the little extra on labor and get the pro's to handle it

 

its not that bad if you have a few tools. i spent about 50 bucks on cheap autozone tools and they worked fine.

 

All you need is a drill, and ball joint seperator, the old school fork seperator will do just fine and is inexpensive. Takeoff the tire, either un-hook brake line or take off caliper, If you remove caliper be sure not to let it hang from the brake line as this will damage the line. Then unbolt balljoiints from spindle, use the seperator to break the ball joints from the spindle. Set the spindle aside. Now take the drill and drill the center of the rivets until the head is thin enough to knock them out. Install new ball joints, make sure they are greased properly, then install everything back the way it was. Pretty simple thing if you have any mechanical skills. I would recommend doing it yourself if you have the ability, I personally feel that mechanics rip people off so I do all I can to keep from going to one.

 

Nothing personal against this person, but if you have a 4X4 you will cause damage to your vehicle and/or injure yourself. There is tension from the tbars on the lower control arms which is transfered through the ball joints and spindles to the upper control arms. You pop a ball joint loose without supporting the lower control arm and things can get real ugly real fast.

Spend the few dollars and get a good shop manual. It will pay for itself over and over.

 

I do have the 4x4 model and not only have I changed my balljoints, but I am finishing up putting on my 5" trailmaster lift on. With the truck lifted on stands the arms hang until they reach the bumpstops. There is not much tension on them from the torsion bars at all from this point. Just break the upper joint first if you are really worried about it and keep a jack under the lower arm to keep it from lowering the whole extra inch or so that the lower arm will try and drop. Or like everyone else said, if you have any doubt that you can perform this task then have a mechanic over charge you for such a simple task, at least if a mechanic does it and something goes wrong then they will take care of it.

Like my buddy above me stated, spend the money and get a book it will help you many times over.

 

I am a certifed auto tech, anyone with decent mechanical skills can do them. its not a hard job at all. the guys above me pretty much have it down. you will get screwed at a shop...........believe me

 

well, oddly enough a similar job just got quoted by a place I have never used before. Screwed at a shop or no, as a result of a sweet accident, isurance will be footing the bill for 2 lower BJs (heh) at $60 each, 2 Upper BJs at $70 each, $170 for a hub assy. $50 for an alignment and $300 in labor later (ouch) it would be $780. lose the hub and you're looking at $610 or so BEFORE removing hub labor...

that seems steep as all hell to me, but hey, someone else's insurance bought it so... who am I to say no?

 

not all mechanics rip people off, its usually just a high labor rate, and mechanics are flat rate 90% of the time.if the job takes two hrs u pay for 2 hrs labor and the tech gets 2 hrs of pay. which could be from 12-25 an hr depending on experience. i wish that sterotype would go away, there are alot of good honest techs out there