Offset Ball Joint Shim

[Waverous]

I have 2 offset ball joint shims, and I want to know if I need to drop the knuckle in order to replace the shims or can I just screw them in from the top without popping the ball joints out

 

[Yeller]

If you can get them free, yes you can just change them, or at least I have without doing the other stuff successfully in the past.

 

[Waverous]

Cool! Thanks - I'll give it a shot!

 

[DirtDonk]

But don’t try too hard. If they don’t wanna come out and you keep trying, you’re just gonna round off the little tips of your wrench. Or worse, round off the notches in the adjusting sleeves themselves.
Is that what you mean by shims? The little round threaded sleeves?

 

[Jdgephar]

The ball joints don't need to come out, but they do need to have the top and bottom "pin" with the threads popped loose, otherwise like DirtDonk said, the nut won't come loose.

 

[Waverous]

But don’t try too hard. If they don’t wanna come out and you keep trying, you’re just gonna round off the little tips of your wrench. Or worse, round off the notches in the adjusting sleeves themselves.
Is that what you mean by shims? The little round threaded sleeves?

Yeah, it is what I mean - oops

 

[DirtDonk]

I say give it a try. But again, don’t try too hard.
How long have they been in? Original from the factory? They’re not gonna wanna move easily unless you de-tension the knuckle.
When I tried to put the eccentrics in mine, which had only been installed for about a year, they wouldn’t come out and I actually did round off the tips.
Because I was too lazy to do it correctly and remove tension on the ball joints first.

How much time do you have to do the job? Can you pull the top nuts off and spray down in the cavity with some penetrating lubricant and let it sit? For a long while?
Then maybe heat the outer surface of the steering yoke a little bit, without putting too much heat into the ball joint. Then try to remove the sleeve.

Otherwise, if that doesn’t do it, and it doesn’t loosen up immediately, just go to the extra trouble of undoing the lower nut part of the way, and smacking the knuckle to relieve tension on the ball joints.
Then you should be able to easily remove and replace the sleeves. In theory…

The extra work arises, as you probably guessed, if you can’t get a reasonable wrench connection on the lower nut, and you have to pull the axle out.
Which means pulling the wheel bearings, hub rotor/drum, spindle and the axle shafts.
Which is probably what keeps most people from doing the job.

 

[Waverous]

Well, that's food for thought

 

[Waverous]

Well, I ended up having to pop the knuckles - went well. Thank you for the information and advice, everyone!