welll my car has been sqeaking for awhile and we all thought it was the strut plate well as far as i can tell now it is not the strut plate at all its just a ball joint..today i bought the ball joint and was planning on doing the job..however realized that the strut is attached to the a-frame via the axel or however you want to word that and if i take the ball joint off which holds the aframe and everything together the strut will decompress and i will not be able to get it all put back together after the ball joint is replaced...now the question is do i need a strut compressor or is their another way to do this.

 

You won't need a strut conpressor.. you can compress it by hand (they're not that tough) or you can use the A Arm (unbolted from the spindle but still bolted to the K member) as leverage to compress it.

 

im surprised to hear that you can compress them by hand i was just thinking they would decompress and i couldnt get it back..on but hey i will try that on friday and will let you know how it goes

 

You should of bought steeda's x2 balljoints. they are probably a lot cheaper too.

 

well as far as i could tell 14.95 at autozone diddnt really seem to bad...LOL i dunno i diddnt think about upgrading at all guess i shoulda considered that before i bougt them but hey oh well
I think im still a bit weary about doing this job with the strut and all by hand is a lil risky but if this guy says you can compress it by hand and get it back in place then i guess i should take his word for it....RIGHT?

 

If you don't want to do any stressful work, you can unbolt the top of the strut from the strut plates. Then when reassembling, bolt the bottom of the strut (2 bolts) back onto the spindle, then jack up the a arm with a jack while guiding the top of the strut back into the strut plate.. If I were to guess, it only takes 50-60 lbs of pressure to compress your struts.