Ok guys so here is the issue I’m having. I was doing my shocks and springs. Had the ball joint castle nut off. As I was jacking the car, the ball joint had fell right out! I was able to put it back in by hand. Should I press in a new ball joint? Or is the control arm shot. I would like to replace them if I had part numbers. Because I can’t find any control arms online. All I see are the super expensive A arms.

 

They make "repair" BJs (heh heh heh) for situations where the hole is wallowed out (it just keeps getting worse, doesn't it) in the CA. They're bigger, so when you install one, it punches the hole out some.

Might be, yours already had one of those installed; so now a "standard" dia one doesn't fit. Or, you're just in the first situation, with a destroyed standard dia hole, and now you need the slightly larger BJs.

No worries though... the same CAs they used for our cars, evidently fit about a dozen other kinds of cars. Observe carefully, your CAs have a place for the lower mount of a shock, but our cars have no shock... so, yeah. Iunno what, but whatever they are, they use shocks instead of struts, and there's LOTS of em. Every time I ever went to the junkyard to get some CAs, they had em sitting on the shelf already pulled, for like $30 the pair; even when there wasn't a Camaro or Firebird in sight, and hadn't been one in the yard for months. Prolly something like S trucks, A & G bodies, Astro vans, stuff like that. Something there's like A BILLION of around.

Just go get another pair.

Only difference I know among any of em, is steering stops; they riveted different little bracket things onto em to limit steering travel, to prevent wheel rub. But you can tell your driver about that, and educate em not to turn the wheels all the way to lock, and it'll be fine. And, the one CA bushing is different in different years, but the difference is obvious and easy to spot. Put in new bushings at the same time as the BJs, they make a YUUUUUJJJJJJJE difference.

 

Do you know what I have to search for to get a bigger diameter ball joint?

 

Not really. I always just went and got other control arms that weren't fornicated instead of that.

 

Go to Rockauto and order loaded lower control arms for a 2000 2WD S10. They are pretty much identical to the F-Body. Do not order the 4WD ones. I just installed a pair on my 89 GTA when I installed my air ride suspension.

 

Thanks! I’m going to check that out.