FixedWing

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After wrestling for ages with stuck ball joints, today I finally got them separated.

I have an early 2000 S4 with aluminium wheel bearing housings. The ball joint in the control link goes into a steel sleeve which is pressed into the aluminium wheel bearing housing. That sleeve is not meant to come out. But it does. If the sleeve moves, there is not enough clearance on one of the links to get the control link out of the hub.

The solution is to remove the entire wheel bearing and lower control link assembly from the car. Then slice the control link around the ball of the ball joint using a grinder and remove all of the aluminium of the links leaving just the ball and shaft still in place. Then there is sufficient clearance to press the ball, shaft and sleeve out of the wheel bearing housing.

Once you have this out of the wheel bearing housing it is possible to put the shaft and sleeve in a press and separate them that way. Even then it took close to 20 tons of pressure to pop the shaft out of the sleeve. I had to slice both control links so that I could get the shaft and sleeve properly positioned in the press to take the full load. No tool could have put enough pressure on the shaft to pop the ball joint while it was in the car. It took a press.

It is impossible to buy the sleeve separately from Audi. So you must have that sleeve to put back into the wheel bearing housing.

Pretty poor quality ball joints. No wonder Audi is now replacing them. I hope the replacement ones are a little better!

But I am very impressed with how light the wheel bearing housings are. :-)

Stephen