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Andy and I were downright assaulting our 1965 Clark Cortez motorhome.
And I know that word may be a trigger for some people so I do not make light of different situations, but here was ours: Both Andy and I were taking turns mustering up every bit of force to attack, beat, batter, hammer (both as a verb while with the noun), strike — heck, use any word that means ‘deliberately hit with the most forceful blows repeatedly’ because that is what we were doing to our antique RV.
So, yes, it was a full-on assault, and I would have felt bad for our rectangular relic … were I not so angry at it.
This is how it is to restore a classic vehicle, too. You find yourself suddenly sucked into a time pit with zero success so that after hours and days of doing the same damn job there is still no progress since you started. And that pisses you off — I mean really pisses you off.
But at the same time you love that quirky, finicky vehicle which, by now, has become so stuffed with hopes and dreams and goals that you often have to slide the windows back and open the doors so that your aspirations and plans can spill forth.
At least this back-and-forth tug of feelings is how it is for Andy and me — bright, happy moments to dark, angry ones. Back and forth, and back and forth. And back. And forth.
This story happens to be one of the dark, angry moments.
Andy and I were hot.
We were tired.
We were not successful in even the smallest of ways.
And it was Day Two, which means Day One held the same actions with both of us stupid enough to return for a second round.
But I’m getting ahead of myself because you also need to understand this gloom did not suddenly appear. Oh no, no, no — Andy and I knew we would be in this very situation before starting this job, which is why we agreed to put it off. Let me explain further: This job revolves around one mechanical part, and Andy had purchased this part three months into owning our Cortez back in October 2019 because our original part was destroyed so it needed to be replaced. However, because this job would mean putting ourselves through the hardest mechanical work, we simply (and intelligently) did not volunteer for that burden. Who would, right?
Fast-forward two years later and our steel beast’s metallic shrieks and groans when traveling could be ignored no longer, which meant Andy and I had to replace a 56-year-old ball joint.
I’m gonna take a moment to explain what a ball joint is because if I can come this far in my mechanical lessons, you can too …
Ball joints are found at the front of vehicles, and there are two for the driver’s side and two for the passenger’s side (an upper ball joint and a lower ball joint per side). Each joint is made up of one ball and socket, which act the same way a ball and socket would for a human body — imagine a shoulder, hip, or other joint, for example.
The difference is the mechanical ball joint facilitates movement from the steering wheel to the actual wheel. According to my research, ball joints are a part of the suspension system. For instance, MOOG reports, “The front suspension is a complex assembly of links, joints, bushings and bearings that allow your front wheels to move up and down independently and turn left or right together.” I have a problem with this because while suspension controls movement up and down, no sir, it does not control movement left and right. Therefore, I’ll silently (or not so silently) boycott that a ball joint is a part of the steering system.
Regardless, each ball joint is protected by a rubber boot, or cover. Our passenger upper ball joint‘s boot had cracked so the grease that was supposed to stay inside to lubricate the ball and socket instead oozed out.
To correct that problem, we needed to replace this entire ball joint … which sounds easy; however, weight and time were against us.
Let’s look at weight first: Ball joints happen to be taper-fit so bumps and bounces while driving aid in pushing the upper ball joint down. Another benefit the ball joint has is overall vehicle weight pushes it down. Then there’s time, meaning how long the ball joint has been allowed to be wedged further into place.
For Andy and I, we were dealt with a 9,000-pound steel beast, which had rambled down roads for 56 years, essentially allowing its upper ball joints to be permanently stuck in place.
Returning to my statement earlier: You can better understand now why I said we put off this job until it could be ignored no longer …
Andy and I arrived on a beautiful July 2021 day, apprehensive of what lay ahead but ready to put in tough work.
On the other hand, our Cortez was ready to dish out tough love, starting with maintaining such a firm grip on our lug nuts that one would believe they have never been loosened before.
After a bit of excessive muscle though, we removed our lug nuts then passenger side tire. Next, a spray of lubricant assisted in removing the three ball joint’s rusted bolts, followed by the pull of a pin to releasing a nut. Now came the focus on getting the ball joint out …
To remove the part, all weight had to be taken off of it so Andy loosened the torsion bar, another mechanical component, but this resists twisting that is created by the suspension. Our torsion bar had also never been loosened before so it had nearly seized in place. This is when our hammer came out and blunt force began, allowing Andy to slowly unscrew the bar. (You should also know the torsion-bar tidbit I am most interested in: Loosening it can raise our Cortez … and I have big dreams in this regard.
With all parts now removed or loosened, Andy grabbed our ball joint fork, a tool made specifically for removing ball joints. Meanwhile, I held some form of hope in my hand with our new ball joint.
Hammering the fork under the ball joint, Andy tap-tap-tapped …
but the ball joint remained in place, making me realize in a matter of seconds the slimmest chance for fast work had completely disappeared.
This is the type of day we will have, I thought, as Andy and I went back and forth on how the ball joint was not raising up, despite the fork moving further under it.
Here, a new plan was put into place, which essentially involved replacing our tap-tap-tappings with whack-whack-whackings.
Still our ball joint refused to budge.
“Can I just propose — ” and I hesitated, entering the battlefield, “to try something?”
At this point, I had watched him battle a fist-sized part for hours and maintain a losing streak. Not only was his momentum decreasing, but his hydration was as well so that sweat dripped from his skin and puddled around him. I couldn’t help but think this is what a vehicle restoration-war zone looked like.
“Yeah, yeah,” Andy replied in a voice that was inviting, dare I say eager to accept help.
“We’ve had the masculine beat-it-to-death,” I started. “How about we have the delicate female touch now?”
To this day, Andy will not let me live this one question down, and I get it — The last action this part needed was anything delicate and stereotypical feminine, but these two facts supported my offer at the time:
- I was a newbie mechanic, naive that there could be parts as annoyingly obstinate as this part.
- I often wonder — as I sit watching Andy struggle and beat and curse and fight our Cortez — if he is simply throwing a temper tantrum and not fully taking in the situation from responsible, calm eyes — eyes only someone such as myself has watching him in this situation.
So yes, everyone, I did offer a “delicate female touch” on the one mechanical part notoriously impossible to remove.
“Yeah” was Andy’s remark back, but I’ll have you know his answer came more in a snort-exhale that showcased his absolute disbelief at my theory.
That’s fine, husband, I thought as I stepped around Andy to get in front of the wheelwell because if there’s one motivation I hold onto it is stubborn pride so I reckoned I’d get the ball joint off one way or another. Take that for your snort-exhale!
I tapped, I jerked, I hit, I hammered …
Screenshot
so much so that this was my facial expression after many, many minutes:
“How’s that feminine touch working?” Andy interjected in one of my moments of pause before building up to beat the Cortez another way.
It was here I had to admit defeat — or at least defeat as one female tackling work solo, which isn’t so bad because Andy admitted this similar defeat earlier but as a single male. From here, we stepped forward together …
Andy held the fork while I hit it in then prepared to hit it down.
“Hard?” I asked because I had pent up anger I planned to release.
“Definitely don’t tickle it,” Andy responded back with the same snort-exhale as before, allowing me no problem to harness that pent up aggression and release it with one gigantic welt.
Still, that did not work.
“There has to be a specific tool … ” I kept telling Andy as we used various tools, various force, and various tactics, all without success.
And this is how Day One ended — It was a complete bust so, as Andy told me, we left the Cortez like this to think about its actions …
Conveniently enough, all the way home I continued to preach how there must be a tool specifically designed for ball-joint jobs and how we simply did not have it … when Andy suddenly told me, “Oh there is — There’s a ball joint splitter.”
Y’all.
We spent five hours … in one-day-short-of-August Virginia heat and humidity … laboring to remove a part known by all mechanics to be impossible to remove … without the correct tool … when Andy tells me that there is a tool called — so perfectly — a ball joint splitter.
I’ll let you imagine the conversation we had from here.
Oh, but I have to tell you this too …
When I asked Andy why he did not get this said-part, he told me he wanted to save money.
Friends. Guess how much this tool costs — just guess. Because I’ll give you a moment to fully appreciate the answer in a bit more time.
This brings me to Day Two and two new tools: a very long breaker bar to get full leverage on our stubborn steel beast and our beautiful (and much appreciated) ball joint splitter.
By the way, this shiny silver ball joint splitter cost only $16.72! And (bear with me as I try to not dwell on the past) ball joint splitters can even be rented — for free — from area auto parts stores!
Sliding the splitter around the ball joint, Andy tightened it down …
before grabbing his ratchet spanner to slowly crank the splitter even tighter.
“When it goes,” Andy paused in the middle of the ratchet spanner’s clicks, “it goes with a pretty loud bang.” Click-click-click — My heart rate increased, along with my thoughts: Would this work? If it does, how loud is ‘pretty loud’? If it didn’t work, could this be an un-do-able job? Would this be the job that ends our Cortez overhaul?
BANG!
The gunshot-sound of one ball joint popping apart ricocheted in the shed followed immediately by our shouts and laughter and pure zeal as we celebrated our victory!
From here, a bit of jiggling brought forth our greasy enemy …
and allowed us to clean the area then apply fresh grease in the arm that holds the ball joint’s taper…
Finally, we could install our new ball joint — With a smear of an anti-seize compound on the surrounding metal, we dropped the ball joint in place then screwed the nut on the bottom. Next, we had to finagle the ball joint under the wishbone, which took some effort …
but soon, we had our ball joint in place.
I’ll spare you the unfortunate details of how our new ball joint’s bolts (supplied by the ball joint company) were not long enough to fit through the wishbone and into our ball joint so we had to pause to order longer bolts … or how the bottom of our ball joint’s stud was too long (preventing the pin from resting securely in the nut) so we had to pause again to purchase washers to stack above the nut (Thank you, RetroRides friends for that idea!) … or how we discovered our shock slipping left and right so we had to pause one more time to buy more washers then remove it, place the washers on either side of the shock, then reinstall it.
This back-and-forth mess led us to a bit of a classic-car-restoration confessional for our YouTube video:
“It’s exhausting to think, Oh, I’m just going to do this one quick job,” Andy confessed, “and it’s not one quick job.”
This is true, but his comment made me realize there are different types of exhaustions. “I think for you it is exhausting physically,” I told him, “and for me it is exhausting mentally.” It is no hidden secret that he is the muscle (and brains) behind our Cortez operation so often having to watch him suffer — with the knowledge that I simply cannot help — also depletes energy, just in a different way.
Anyway, this is a round-about way of saying there was an amount of fiddling with our ball joint to — finally — get it in place and tightened down.
The last steps were to re-adjust our torsion bar, put the tire back on, and drop our antique RV …
and it was here my pleas to get some type of lift were miraculously answered!
From the ground to the top of our wheel arch, the measurement now was 82.5 centimeters — versus the previous 79 centimeters (which, for Americans, is almost one-and-a-half inches)! Hey, I’ll take anything I can get!
“Ready to fix the shock on the other side then take it for a test drive?” Andy asked and, with the excitement of completing our tough ball-joint job, I was absolutely in agreement … until we took our front driver’s side wheel off and discovered our upper ball joint had split on the driver’s side.
Y’all, restoring an antique vehicle is precisely how Andy confessed: There is no such thing as one small task and so instead of a test drive, you know what our next story will be …
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