I recently decided to get some ball joints as I found two of them for the front on sale at RockAuto, I paid 3.94 a piece.
I planned to change them to the ones that have grease-able fittings, not the so called sealed lifetime ball joints.

Here are the ones I ordered on Amazon, on RockAuto the same pic was used, I see the zerk fitting, but when I got my BJ'* in they were not ones with grease-able fittings.
Would you guys just use them since I paid only 20.00 total to get both of the ones I have?
Or would you just wait till you get the money to get some actual grease-able ones?

I'll use these if they should last a while, the boots feel like there is no grease inside, but of course I cannot see inside the boot, I am guessing that is how it is supposed to be.


When I tackle this job I have a way to remove the rivet heads, but what would be the best thing to buy to remove the rest?
I am looking at the following.



or

you got moog ones im sure they will outlast your ownership of the car. you can do the rivets that way but the metal is hard on the drills and they tend to walk. i use a grinder with a cutoff wheel carefully going down to the metal without touching the control arm, then punchout the rest with the sharp point punch

I plan to use my dremel XPR 400, and cutoff wheels to get the heads of the rivets off, I was wondering if I should use drill bits, or a punch to remove the rest, if a punch will work then I'll go that route, as it is cheaper overall, I already have a good 5lb hammer to bang the punch with, so that should do the trick, then again that may be a little heavy, I hope I do not hit my hand with it, that would not be good..


Thanks for the response!

Once you grind off the rivet heads, you should be able to pry out the ball joint.

Dremel XPR400! I have one. That thing is a blast to use!

Good to hear, I'll grab the punch kit just on case, it is only around 13.00 total, and I get them free 2 day shipping with Amazon Prime.

Yeah man, I love my Dremel XPR 400, I got it back when it sold in the box that was like a fishing tackle-box, I have found many uses for it since I have owned it, I have used the planer on a door where the home was sinking, I use one of the stone grinding wheels on low to trim my dogs nails without splintering them, I polished my thermostat housing, my throttle body/butterfly valve, also used the flexi wand and a few carbide cutters to slowly port match my LIM, and I knocked down a lot of the rough throughout the runners, I made sure not to totally smooth them out as I have heard doing that, or getting them bigger than the heads ports will cause turbulence.

I have definitely gotten my monies worth!

Just noticed none of the punches in that kit I posted a link to have sharp tips, they are all flattened, do I need to find a pointed punch?

Here is a chizel/punch kit that is not too pricey, it looks like it has a 3/8" and 1/2" pointed punch, would one of those work better than the flattened ones?

Use your Dremel to make points.

Genius.
Works for me, thanks Mike.

I see I failed to add the link to the post above, this was the set I was talking about.

Another reason why I love my Dremel and having spare tools around. I can pretty much customize any tool I need to.

Hear hear!

I have the tool used for removing inner tie rods, the insert that fit my tie rod would not fit right so the tool was useless, but after I used the Dremel on the tool & bit I was able to get it to function properly, if not for the Dremel I'd have wasted 40.00 on that inner tie rod tool.