Anyone got experience changing the front lower ball joints on a 430. I have got the weight off the wishbone by disconnecting the anti roll bar and the 2 top mounting bolts for the shock absorber. I am trying to remove the bolt from the lower wishbone where it goes through the bottom fixing of the shock absorber ( bolt 19 on the drawing ) The bolt will turn ok but does not back out, so the threads on the bolt must be for the nut only and no threads in the wishbone. Tried giving it a tap but just wants to turn but not back out- do i keep on tapping it or am i missing something here.
I believe it's similar to the 360...I put an extra jack under the control arm and lifted it up to ride height so it is straight and then used 2 wrenches to break the bolt loose from the strut bolt.
you are missing nothing just use a big hammer and hit the bolt with the nut on just a few threads.( hit the nut actually, because hitting directly at the bolt will ruin the threads) after you got that big bolt out, wd40 inside and out will solve the problem. unless, you have a crooked bolt because of potholes, previous accidents, etc. edit: your hammer should hit an socket extension(or any metal bar that will contact the nut nicely), then the extension should contact the nut, then the nut will transfer the hit to the bolt.
Well the bolt is out with the help of a parallel punch and a lump hammer- they dont give up easy for sure.
I have never done ball joints on the Ferrari, but I just did them on my pickup truck. Here is an excellent tool for separating ball joints. I use it and it's faster than anything else I've found for disconnecting the taper: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003YVWHOE/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 You can use the hammer on top of the nut method, but it's usually not the best idea in my experience. The tool above works great with an impact wrench or with a ratchet. Ray
Umm, 360s and 430s don't have tapered studs on the ball joints. The ball joints are held to the uprights with regulars bolts that can just be unscrewed. The bolt that the original poster is having trouble removing is just a regular bolt. He just need the correct punch/driver and a big hammer to get it out.
Well it is out and the ball joint has been changed for a hill engineering item- the lower one is a far better design than the upper as it has a shoulder on the outer ring. I had some rotary fibre bushes for a demel which were useless for everything- turned out the did a great job of cleaning out the old adhesive from the ball joint enclosure in the arm- mirror finish and took all of 2 minutes. Quoted £400 just in labour to do one by the dealers.