Recently replaced the passenger side radius arm bracket, and the bushing as well as my driver side bushing or the radius arm, brought the truck to the alignment shop, they sad they cannot do the alignment due to the fact that both sides upper and lower ball joints are bad.

Ordered some ball joints today, should be here this weekend. From what I've read and watched so far, it looks like a huge job, any tips or tricks that you guys could offer me!?

 

I never thought ball joints were that big of a deal. Just kinda time consuming. My advice is just to not stress about it too much. Take it one step at a time, it really isn't that bad. I hope you ordered some high quality ball joints so you're not doing this again in a year.

 

it's more than just time consuming if you live in the rust belt because you fight freeing everything up along the way.then while your in there,your going to replace/repack bearings,seals,u-joints etc.(least you should.)
you need to press the joints out and new ones in,and you likely don't have it,so you need to rent it.
lots of time,lots of heat if you have it,lots of penetrating spray,a big hammer,maybe two,some bloody knuckles and los of swearing.
a 2wd pickup it's not so bad of course,as there is much less to do,but when inside a 4wd truck,you have yourself a full weekend ahead.if you can afford it,and get a decent deal on it,it's one of them jobs that might just be best to a shop who has all the tools and heat and let them mess with it.i'v never (and probably never will til im old lol) payed to have it done,but i can see why many/most people do.it's a pita job.there's no sugar coating it.

 

As he said above, it's definitely worth while to do the axle u-joints if they haven't been changed recently...

 

Thanks guys, I ordered some Raybestos professional grade serviceable ball joints, they were a few bucks cheaper than the motorcraft ones. Also ordered some adjustable camber eccentrics.

I am currently in Hawaii, truck has 80,000 miles on it, although the ball joint nuts are very rusty. There is some dealer paperwork still in the trucks glovebox, from west virgnia, I have no clue at what point it was shipped to the island.

I have a decent set of tools here,plenty of big hammers, impact gun, sockets. I've been hitting the nuts with pb blaster 2x a day for a few days now. Depending on when my parts arrive I'll either do this over the weekend, or next weekend. I am hoping most of the other stuff, seals, bearings, u joints, etc are still good as I don't wanna dump a ton of money into this thing. Today hit the nuts with pb, then the torch, then some pb again, figure i might as well help my self beforehand as much as possible!

I was figuring on renting a torque wrench, ball joint press, possibly a slide hammer with the spindle attachment since I've had to use one before on my 82. We shall see how this all goes!