Dear Vanagoneers!

     I have been reading the various postings that came up under a search
for  "replace Upper Ball joints"  (alot of reading) and trying to learn &
understand how to do this.

          What really caught my eye were a couple postings that said this is
easy, you can do it in less than an hour and you dont need to do a
realignment after!  Well this got me all excited, but then I found that some
of those "posters" no longer had valid email addresses, (I mean they had
changed their addresses , anyway I got returned mail, undeliverable) and the
others did it on NON-SYNCRO models or from a much older vanagon.
      Have any of you replaced yours on a SYNCRO??  Did you have to remove
anything else to get the ball joints off?  like the brakes?  Did you have to
compress the big suspension spring?  Did you have to use a ball joint press?
Were you able to remove the joint from its mounting (or holder, for lack of
a better word!),  or did you have to remove the mount as well??
          I have been loaned an air powered pickle fork which i hope to use
to to remove just the joint.....
           BTW, I have a Bentley manual,  its hopeless and useless!  Not
even one complete sentence on how to remove these joints!  And thats the way
its been for every job I've had to do on the Syncro (and there have been
many!).   Not only does he NOT tell you how to do anything in this book, but
he has all these diagrams and illistrations, and he never tells you what any
of these thousands of parts are called!  So its very difficult and confusing
to communicate with anyone else about this stuff.  I dont know what to call
any of these parts!!

Thank you, Vanagoneers, for your invaluable help!!

- Peter
'87 Syncro 84K
Honda CBR 600  23K
Reply to:  printstud@bigfoot.com

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