I have replaced a few of these on 240 Volvos, but yesterday was truly depressing session trying to remove the ball joint on my 740.
I always think this should be an easy job, take off the wheel, remove 3 bolts, pull out the old one, bolt together...........no WAY.
The ball joint is always stuck in the suspension arm. On 240's I've managed to pound on it and use a fork typs tool to get it apart, but on the 700 cars the suspension arm is aluminium, which really welds itself to the steel ball joint.
No amount of pounding on the fork tool would budge it, i even torched it, PB, lowered the jack to support the bottom of the ball joint, nothing.
Finally removed the suspension arm (thanks Volvo for making this easy, 3 more bolts).
Put the torch to it for five minutes. Even then in the garage I couldn't budge it. Finally brought it in the house, put it in a vise and gave it a good smack (praying the aluminium was strong, did this on a peugeot once..end of part). POP it was out!
OK, So does anyone have a tool that will really do this on the car, I mean something that exerts LOTS of force? Or what is your method/horror story?
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744-16v,745-16v,242Turbo.245DLT