How to Replace Front Lower Ball Joint 2006-08 Dodge RAM

Okay, friends. One of the first things we need to do is safely raise and support the vehicle so that the suspension is hanging. The best way to do that is right underneath the frame. Once you've done that, remove all five lug nuts and remove the wheel. Now, I'm going to take a nice pry bar and I'm going to come in between the caliper and the rotor itself, and just try to push in the pistons a tiny bit. Perfect. Now, we're going to take the caliper off. We want to make sure we don't put a tug on our flex hose when the knuckle comes down. It's good to have something hanging off the frame so you can hang the caliper once it's off. There we are. And set that so it's going to be safe. Let's get the rotor off of here. We're gonna take off our tie rod end nut here. So, just go ahead and bend out that little clip. Remove the nut. I like to leave it on a couple threads. Now, we're going to bonk right along here to separate the tie rod from the knuckle. Set this up here. Next, we're gonna use another cord and we're going to go around the knuckle, just like this. And then I'm gonna bring it over to the frame. Perfect. Next, we need to remove this nut right here. You're gonna notice there's a little bit of a locking neoprene in there. If you need to heat it up a little bit, it would probably be helpful. We're going to remove this and then we'll separate the two.

Get that nut, put on just a couple threads. Now, we're going to bonk on the knuckle a little bit to try to separate the two. Just keep in mind that this will try to pull away. Okay. Let's carefully move the knuckle away. Let's go ahead and remove our lower ball joint nut. Back on just a couple threads here. The next thing we need to do is bonk right here on the knuckle to try to cause some vibration to break it free from the ball joint itself. Just keep in mind that once this breaks free, the safety nut's gonna keep it from falling. But the top part might kind of swing a little bit. Get our safety cord off of there. Take off the safety nut. Let's get this out of here. The next thing we need to do is peen over these edges so they're facing in towards the ball joint. They're kind of like a little lock.

So, now it's gonna be time to press out our lower ball joint. To do that, you're gonna need this tool right here with a couple little cups. Set the cup with it so that the ball joint stud can come down through. Take your ball joint tool, put it just like this with the stud going through it, and then come along the top with the pressing unit itself. So, now we're going to go ahead and press this down. If the ball joint press isn't working, what you could try doing is using your hammer. Just give it a couple loving bonks on the top, try to break it free. All right. So, I can start to see it move here, so I'm just going to continue on.

Now, it's gonna be time to install our brand new ball joint. Something that I like to point out is this area of the boot right there. That needs to be facing towards the inward portion of your vehicle. So, of course, I'm gonna turn this just like that. And this is gonna press in from the bottom up, something to think about when you're pressing it up because you don't want to damage the boot with your cup that you're gonna use. So, I just find one that fits right up and around the outside. Then I find another one that goes just like this, lets the stud come through. Set it just like that. Now, we're going to need something that goes along the top so that the ball joint can press up and through. That way there, we can put on our lock clip. Okay. I got this nice and tight. We've got this sitting as level as possible with the control arm. You want to make sure the ball joints isn't sitting off-kilter. Tighten this until this area of the ball joint hits right up against the control arm. As you continue going up, make sure that it's continuing to go straight. If it's going cockeyed, you need to straighten it out. So, right there I can hear an audible difference in the amount of pressure that's going on there. So, I'm just going to take a peek. It looks as though it's sitting pressed against the whole control arm all the way around. Let's remove our tools and inspect our job. Make sure that it's seated all the way around. Let's continue on by putting on our lock clip. Use these little pliers here. Start them in there. There we are. Just make sure it's sitting in the groove all the way around, that's what locks this ball joint in. Looks amazing.

All right. So, now, it's gonna be time to get our knuckle back up on here. Line up your axle with the splines of the wheel bearing. Let's get that lower ball joint stud in there. Hold up the knuckle, put your washer and the nut on there. Line up your ball joint stud with the knuckle hole. I'm gonna use a pry bar to pull it down. Start that nut on there. Let's go ahead and snug this up. The lower ball joint nut as well. Torque your upper ball joint nut to 40 foot-pounds. Now, we're going to torque this to 38 foot-pounds. Once you've done that, you want to make sure that the slots on the ball joint nut line up with the hole on the ball joint stud itself. If it's not, you need to continue tightening until it is. Take your locking cotter pin, slide it right through, and then peen it over. Let's get the tie rod stud back in here, put on our nut. Snug it up. Let's go ahead and torque this to 45 foot-pounds. Once again, we need to continue on to make sure that it's lined up. Looks like it could go a little further. Cotter pin in there. Make sure you peen it over.

Now, you'd want to clean up the mating surface on your wheel bearing so that it looks more like this. You can use a brush or anything that's gonna clean up any of the rust. Make sure you clean up the backside of your rotor where the mating surface is. Let's apply a little bit of copper never-seize on the bearings. Go ahead and put your rotor up on there. Now, we're going to grab the caliper, start it on there as well. Let's go ahead and start the caliper on there. There we are. Start in both of your bolts. It's a good idea to use a little bit of threadlocker on these. Okay. Let's bottom these out. Now, let's torque these to 138 foot-pounds. Now, it's going to be time to get the wheel up on here. We're gonna snug up the lug nuts and we'll torque it to 130 foot-pounds.

Torqued. We're just going to go ahead and pump up that brake pedal. That feels good. Okay. So, now, at this point, what you want to do is take it for a road test and, of course, get it down to your local alignment shop.