Looking in my manual, the ball joint should drop out of the steering knuckle after the two retaining bolts are removed.

It’s stuck tight! Are these pressed in?

How has anyone removed it in the past?

Thanks, Dan

 

Never mind, I got it. It had rusted in there.

I made up a poor man’s puller by buying 2 flat-head 10 x 50 mm bolts, running those into the bolt holes about 1/2”, then using an old lawnmower blade across them with the ball joint stud sticking out of the center hole I tightened the nut and pulled it out.

Oh, and I’d sprayed it with PB Blaster and it set for awhile before I tried.

$3.85, not counting what went into the Cuss Jar...

 

This is brilliant! Thanks for the post, I'm itching to try this. Mine rusted in too; I beat it to all hell and got one of them out, but your method sounds more pleasant. Pretty clever!

I hate the youtube videos where it just falls out, things never so simple. Even for us southerners...I can't imagine in salt rust land up north. What a nightmare.

 

Lol the classic video of the parts falling off is great!

Just went through this myself, if you have a torch apply some heat to the hub surrounding the ball joint for a minute or two. Then simply use flat head screwdrivers and hammer them in on either side where the bolts were. Takes a few minutes working it off, but your really not going to damage anything with this method. Once you so get it out, clean them holes out the ball joint sits in and apply antiseize or a good amount of thick grease to prevent this again!

best of luck!

 

FREE tool rental at Autozone and O'Reilly's for this specific problem. In the future, do yourself a favor and go grab the correct tool.

 

My dad suggested torch thing. I have a propane one was going to try that but managed to get it off with lots of beating. I hit it hard and got it to spin back and forth then wedged heavy flat screwdriver between ball joint and knuckle working it out. Was not easy.

Def will apply the antiseize but hope to never do this again on this car lol.

I did not see a useful tool to do this; all those are for separating the ball joint from the control arm, NOT ball joint to knuckle. There is no way to grab anything. Even the bentley manual doesn't suggest a special tool for this because it's supposed to just come out. That's why I was excited to see the poor man puller idea which I wouldn't have thought of, I will try on the other side today.

 

Glad to see this helped out someone else!

Wow, it’s really been 4 1/2 years since I did that job?!

Daughter still has the same Mini, and it’s been running great. LOTS of repairs, after all it was an auction car in the past.

Took a while but the car has NO warning lights on and everything works. In particular the SRS (airbags) system was a PITA to sort out.

The only major thing we haven’t touched has been the engine itself. They didn’t nickname it The Unbreakable Lump for nothing!

 

Nice! Well your idea helped see picture below. I used an old piece off of a shredder that was plenty heavy for this task. And just loaded it up some (didn't want to damage threads in knuckle) and beat on it few times and it came right off.

I didn't really want a Mini lol but my uncle gave me a deal I couldn't refuse. 2005 80k or something miles and aunt (slow) driven for 3k$. My dad also had a 2008 non S at around 200k the engine exhaust valve(s) burned and he had to replace them/rebuild head, new rings etc. But he sold it around 250+k.

Mine is a supercharged one so it may have a harder life and I don't exactly take it easy it's sort of disposable car to me lol. Regarding airbag light only trouble I had was a side impact sensor a mouse or something chewed the wire or it got rubbed through, once I figured out what stupid code meant I chased it down and found it, resolved. It's been pretty good to me otherwise, except this horrible knocking from sway bar bushing. I finally gave in and pulled the subframe doing all that stuff. Fun! (not)

Dad said his engine was some sort of joint venture project engine that isn't as good quality as the BMW engines that were in some of them. I'm not sure about my engine year, time will tell lol. I kind of want to do supercharger pulley mod but that won't help longevity. Yea I have all the BMW tool stuff for my 335d which also works on the mini, fully . So I can do anything factory can do including coding.

I had an old jetta, nicknamed "2.slow" it was bulletproof. Finally sold it with 540k it started having head gasket issues and was super old and worn out lol. A mexican guy bought it, fixed it, restored the body, and drives it to this day. Amazing lol. He only fixed the head had original block!

 

i had the axle of out my wheel bearing, so the back of that ball joint was exposed. then i took a long punch and a hammer and just knocked it out. easy peasy.
(not my picture, i just edited it to show where i hit it with the punch)

 

I hit it real hard on the two back lips and it didn’t budge. Maybe you’re just really strong but there are different levels of rust. Mine probably wasn’t as bad as Dans but was decently bad lol.