Thread: Greasing ball joints

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These are all new ball joints -

Has anyone had grease squish out of the grease fitting side of a ball joint before the rubber boot fills? Any idea what would cause this?

Solution - Buy a new set?

I'm not sure what you mean here. Grease should not come out of the balljoint on the steel end by the fitting. if you are having trouble getting grease into the joint you may have to bounce the car a little while you try to grease it. You should only fill it till the boot swells or you can blow the boot off.

I feel your pain, that happened to me after hours of labor on a 72 cad that i did ball joints on. Next time i do it i plan to just put one or two squirts of grease and let it go. As far as what i did with that car when it happened....after i stopped raging around the car like a physcho i put the rest of it together and drove it. Worked fine until i pulled the motor and junked the car two years later.

Grease should not come out of the balljoint on the steel end by the fitting.

Exactly as I thought - i have never seen this happen before.
I'll attempt to post a picture tonight.

You know - I'm beginning to think I'm the definative point in case to Murphy's law.

No matter how small the probability of an event occuring - I will experience it at sometime in my life!!!!

The check ball in the zerk is stuck.

He didn't say it was coming back out the grease fitting he said it is coming out at the seam around the fitting.

Finally got a picture downloaded.

I removed the lower ball joint as it seem to be too stiff, and the grease in looked silvery like 'never seize'. I'm pretty sure that was the noise I was looking for. While SLOWLY turning the wheel it would creak like crazy.

Here's a picture of the leak I was talking about -

I have never seen grease come out in that area. I would change it. Shouldn't be a bad job has been changed once already.

About the only ways for grease to come out at that point is, first of all, the actual ball joint or 'A' frame housing is a slightly out of spec or, worse, you have an 'A' frame that is a bit wallowed out, cracked or distorted. With ball joints there is often an orientation - and with Moogs that I have installed, the instruction sheet is somewhat fuzzy. I would take a real good look for cracks, and if none were seen, drive it !!

One company, I think it's TRW, makes oversize ball joints for just this problem, I used 'em in a 72 Camino with good results.
Although it's usually the press-in joint that's O/S. The bolt-in ones like in the picture shouldn't be a problem.