ok grease and clean any buildup off. maybe even rub it with some sandpaper. have you done this before. im hitting it upwards too so its kinda akward and with alot of grease it should tap right in. hopefully i really dont want to disconnect the lower control arm and take it to a shop to press it in. trying to avoid that and do it on my own.

 

ive never had to do it on a camaro but ive done it on other cars. defiantly use sandpaper in the hole nothing crazy just get as much of the rust out as you can.

 

another thing to think about is moog and others make them a bit over sized to deal with the wear of the hole in the LCA which makes getting them seated really tough. I would heat the LCA and freeze ball joint.. put ball joint in freezer at least 4 hrs. also go to menards or where ever and buy the right size pipe and cut it down to length and try the rented tool to seat it.

 

you should be able to unscrew the grease zerk

 

Man, this makes me really glad I found a 12 ton press at a garage sale last weekend for $40.!!!! I should be able to do the ball joints and all the bushings in my own gaeage.

 

killer find

 

ok. thanks for everyones input im gona try again tomorrow. ill be back on for updates

 

When I did the engine on my 94 I had the front suspension and subframe out. I had all that stuff sandblasted and I painted it before replacing all the bushings and the lower balljoints.

Getting the old balljoints out wasn't horrible but getting the new Moog "problem solver" joints *in* was. Two shops tried with their mega-presses and I was never really satisfied with how far the new joints went in and how square they were in the bores. The amount of pressure required to get them in as far as they did started to bend the LCAs. When the balljoints aren't fully seated it's a real pain to install the grease boot.

So *definitely* proceed with great caution here! If I were to do it over again I would buy new GM LCAs with balljoints and bushings already installed despite the price. Or at least I would mike the new Moog balljoints and the LCA bore and then file the bore to get a decent interference fit. Putting the Moog parts into undamaged LCAs will cause nothing but grief.

On the pic you can see where the LCA surface started to flatten due to pressure. The shape of the control arm upper surface makes it difficult to support that surface evenly. As far as the shops were concerned "the balljoints will never fall out" so going further wasn't an option.