05 Mazda 3 Steering knuckle an hub replacment

dogwater

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Mazda Protege
Just getting done replacing steering knuckle & hub on my sons Mazda 3. He drove it "WAY" to long an totally FUBARed the whole thing. It was an easy job until I got to the pinch bolt/lower ball joint. I got the nut off the bolt easy but the bolt would not come out even with hammering it with a 3lb. hammer. I even used my 1/2 air ratchet which has 750 ft. lbs. of torque an it quickly rounded off the bolt head an yes I did hose bolt down with penetrating oil. I ended up having to drill out the bolt, that took about an hour & a half. If I would of known that the ball joint was as bad as it was I would of used a saws all an cut thru the ball joint shaft.
What you should do if your faced with this is don't use an air ratchet use a 1/2 in breaker bar with a 6 sided socket not a multi point. Be aware that the OME bolt head is not very tall that's why my air ratchet rounded it off. It does take some force with breaker bar to get the bolt to turn. Try to get it to turn about 1 full turn then it can be hammered out.
Getting the ball joint shaft out of the pinch joint, I used a chisel an hammered it into the gap to widen the gap. Then I used a tire tool ( bar w/a square pointed end) to pry the shaft out. It came out about 3/4's of the way but no more. I ended up unbolting the lower control arm, taking it off an hammering on it till the shaft came out. This was the drivers side an the strut was still connected to the knuckle. Passenger side you'd have to drop the a/c compressor. Front bolt won't compleatly come out with it in the way.
Both lower ball joints were replaced. I rented a ball joint compressor tool. Its not hard to do. Hardest part was trying to figure out which pieces to use in the kit but the ball joints came right out & went back in easy.
 
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Wow. That sounds like a solid mechanic's battle! I bet you're glad it's over. :D
 
Wasn't much fun. My son is driving my truck & his Mazda is parked behind my Camaro.
Another point of interest is you need to know the production date because some of the Mazda 3's were made with a different ABS connector. I guess it changed locations. The ABS connector I had was on the spindle/knuckle. When I went to the local Pick n Pull all I found was spindles without the ABS connector. I ended up ordering a used spindle w/ABS.
 
Sorry to hear about the challenges.

I suspect that in many cases this would have been handled by replacing the whole lower arm, but it seems like a waste to replace a component unnecessarily.

Thanks for the tips, but I would never consider using a double-hex (12-point) socket with any impact wrench, or even with a hand ratchet in an extreme case like this. I didn't know you could even buy impact sockets which are not 6-point, but sure enough there are some 12-points out there.
 
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