[Falcon79]

Hello guys,

I'm trying to put my brand new upper control arms on and when I try to tighten the castle nut on the ball joint the shaft spins with the nut. I'm also having the same problem with the tie rod ends as well. Does anybody know a fix for this? Thanks.

 

[Calponycarsmike]

Are you using a air gun?

 

[Falcon79]

I'm just using my ratchet with a long tube socket, nothing special or fancy.

 

[steve sturgin]

Hi,

You may want to clean the shaft and the hole of all grease and oil, give it a hit to get it seated with a piece of wood. You may want to get some sandpaper to rough the surfaces up a bit if it still spins.

Try cleaning the thread so it's not working against you.

Steve

 

[dne']

try this

:waveyHi, dne' here,
Try jacking up the lower control arm, that will put pressure on top and bottom ball joints. You may want to check to make sure the Control arms you bought are correct. Maybe compare to your old arms? The same can go for the tie rods, just don't go crazy jacking the car up on the end of the tie rod! (the inner tie rods are a different story), just a little pressure. Hope this helps.
dne'

 

[Falcon79]

hit it with a piece of wood how, upwards?

 

[ITLRUN]

A ball-joint should be pressed in, sounds like you have the wrong ball-joints. That's the correct way to install a ball-joint, have it pressed in don't try to take it up with the castle nut. Your looking for an accident, just waiting to happen, Mike. SCT Tuner.:bigthumbsup

 

[steve sturgin]

Good point, i was thinking more of the tie rod ends ..... i like dne's soloution better fot the uca ...

As Mike suggested perhaps you need to make sure you have the correct part ....

Steve

 

[PaulS]

Hello guys,

I'm trying to put my brand new upper control arms on and when I try to tighten the castle nut on the ball joint the shaft spins with the nut. I'm also having the same problem with the tie rod ends as well. Does anybody know a fix for this? Thanks.

Don't hit it with anything - you can hurt the joint. When the shaft of the joint spins you can pry up on the joint with a bar (if you are working alone use a jack) to put some friction on the shaft as you draw the nut down on it.
Having both pieces clean and dry will help too and make sure the nut is going on straight (not cross-threaded). The shafts are tapered and will hold as the taper seats.

 

[1965stang]

I agree with PaulS. There should be enough initial pressure from seating the joints with the tapers to hold it in place. It almost sounds like your ball joints are too small, so it's spinning. I would also recommend jacking up the spindle to put enough pressure on it to start the seating process. Once it starts settling together down onto the taper, it should be fairly easy to tighten down the castle nuts. Mine went on quite easily and I didn't have any of these problems since the tapered part held it for me.

Don't overtighten it though, just bring the castle nut down far enough that you can slide the flat cotter pin through the hole and bend it out. That'll hold it in place.

 

[Falcon79]

jacked it up and the bolts screwed right on thanks