Balljoint swap question

[ratbones]

I found a donor 89 2wd nissan truck to get everything for a balljoint and disk brake swap. Are there any special tools needed to take everything off the donor so I dont fuck anything up or just normal tools? Thanks

[datzenmike]

What are you swapping it on to?

[ratbones]

71 521

[wayno]

You know this swap isn't going to just bolt on, if it did, everyone would have done it to their 521s already.

I put 620 disc brakes/balljoints onto my 521, there was a lot of fabrication involved, and it took me a couple years to get it working properly(before Ratsun), if you look at mklotz recent thread you can get an idea what is involved, shortening or lengthening arms, changing things to get the upper balljoints where they need to be, these guys wouldn't be selling kits for the 320/520/521/620 to put disc brakes on kingpin frontends, if there was a way to easily do what you are talking about doing, their kits are a lot easier and safer way to put disc brakes on your 521 than what I did.

I am not trying to scare you, but my truck drove very badly for quite some time before I figured it out, things like the truck trying to bite into the turn(turn sharper on its own) while I was going 50mph around a curve(very dangerous), having the upper A frame bolts break when I touched the brakes, this was because when the bolts were tightened, the A arm spindle was mounted at such an angle for alignment purposes(getting the upper balljoint into position) that the head of the bolts would bend, and eventually break when loaded, like when you hit the brakes.

One of the biggest break throughs for me was when I figured out that the upper A arms needed to be on the opposite sides(left side on the right/right side on the left), this positioned the upper balljoint where it needed to be, rather than a bunch of shims between the mount surface and the spindle which was breaking the heads off the bolts under stress.

Enough ranting.

[mklotz70]

The bolts holding the UCA's on are pretty big...21mm? ...somewhere around there I think. The '89 has the UCA on the outside of the shock tower, but you'll have to take the shock off to remove it. The bolt holes are too far apart to attach to the 521 frame. As Wayno pointed out to me, the 720 uppers are much better.

 

As it's been said.....there's no easy way. Check the youtube link in my siggy. I recently put 8 vids up of how I'm doing the ball joint swap.

[jon521]

klotz, im excited for whenever you finish that balljoint set up!