I Must Fight Alone

It was the end of February when we reinstalled the control arm. Again things went pretty smoothly. First we connected the arm loosely to the frame, placed the spring and connected the lower end of the shock absorber. Then the tricky part was to jack the arm up and load the spring enough so we could connect the upper end of the shock absorber. Getting the spring to stay in the correct place was a bit fiddly but together we managed to do it pretty easily. After this we didn't have to worry about the spring any more so bolting the rest of the parts together was simple. Now to do the same for the passanger side!

This is when things got a bit more difficult. My friend moved to live about 150km away from me. So from now on, I would have to work alone with the car. This would be interesting...

After helping my friend to move, I began working with the other control arm. It took me couple nights but I finally managed to get it off.

Getting the driver side was easy when there was a professional working with it but now it wasn't so simple any more. The lower ball joint was really badly stuck. No matter how much I sprayed it with WD-40, hammered it and used a pickle fork, it would not come off. I went and bought two different removal tools but neither of them worked because one was too small and the other just slipped of the joint when tightening it. I started to see red and finally got the ball joint off with the pickle fork and a larger hammer. I guess I was just afraid to use enough strength...