Sperry,
They have built 4 subaru motors for a friend of mine and they turned out great..good luck man sorry your car is down..

P.s when i say 4 motors it was 2 that where blown up twice by the person who owns the car fault not AIMS...FYI

Well, I got the shortblock built by AIMS, and they cleaned/lashed my heads, and everything looks fine to me. I'm not worried much about their work. Like I said earlier, I'm much more worried about the rest of the assembly that I'm doing myself, since I've never assembled a motor from the ground up like this.

Then again, I have been around these motors for like 7 years now, so I've done pretty much everything short of the work AIMS did, just not all at once. So unless I'm a total idiot, I should have gotten everything together right. At least I don't have a big pile of parts left over or anything. :lol:

a small pile?

There is a small pile... in it are all the parts I'm knowingly not putting back on, like the heater-core hoses, the old oil pan, etc. But there's no "um, where does that thing go" pile. :lol:

That is always good.

Screw you ball-joints!

Okay, how the hell do I bust the ball joint loose from the LCA? I pulled the pin, took off the castle nut, and pounded the living crap out of the LCA's to get the ball joint to come loose. Are those things pressed in there (the FSM doesn't seem to think so)? Do I need some special extractor tool?

WTH! I really wanted to have my whiteline roll-center kit installed today when I put my steering rack back in. But I'm stuck trying to get these damn balls to drop! *snicker*

Scott you are such a n00b. Use a pry bar.

This is not motor related, please make another thread. :)

Go buy a pickle fork at Harbor Freight. http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/cta...emnumber=38649

If you have an air chisel, they make a version that plugs into those as well.

Pickle forks work. What works better (no shit) is whacking the side of the control arm with a mallet while prying it a bit. I was skeptical too, until I did it. The impact pops the ball joint right out.

Of course I was doing it on steel Legacy LCA's, not aluminum ones.

I'm pretty sure that if I can bend a set of 8" ChannelLocks prying on the ball joint, a $3 paperclip isn't going to do shit.

Also, my 2' pry-bar can't get enough leverage on it. Plus hitting it with a mallet, hammer, or 2x4 didn't seem to work either.

And Aaron, I've got steel LCA's too. Those and my front endlinks are probably the only thing left on the suspension that's still from the original car.

No idea, then. I was doing a strike witha brass mallet at about a 45 degree angle up and it pops right out, which is tough at the height you've got the car.

Pickle fork is the right tool. It's wedge shape driven by a hammer will put more separating force on a ball joint than any prybar or channel locks IMHO. I have one you can borrow (I think).

You don't pry with a pickle fork! You wedge it apart by hammering the wedge shaped fork between the two sides.

I had exactly the same problem you do with the Stealth, bought the pickle forks and poof, had them off in minutes.

Use the right tool for the job. :P

Or go buy the $90 air hammer version if it makes you happier. :P :P

Another trick is if you have an extra castle nut screw the sacrificial nut onto the threads to protect them and beat the shit out of it with a hammer.

If even the pickle fork doesn't work, use one of these:

http://www.international-auto.com/in...?fa=p&pid=2720

On one of my cars, I tried banging on the side of the arm, tried a pickle fork, no luck. Used this thing, and popped the fucker off with no drama. I don't know if you'll have room for it on the Subaru though.

If you don't want to buy, I have one, but probably won't be able to get to it for a week or so...

The ball joint stem has a self-locking taper. When wedged into the matching tapered receiver it locks together like a hard press fit.

But... re. the "FSM"... perhaps you should don full pirate regalia and pray to the FSM to use His divine noodly appendages to pry apart your suspension. :lol:

http://clade.acnatsci.org/mussel/gra...ti_monster.gif

Huh? FSM = Factory Service Manual. At least on a car message board. :P

As far as those forks are concerned... I'm still lost as to where they'll wedge to pop that bitch out. Unless they're like 2" thick... there's not really a lip between the LCA and the lower ball half of the joint that you can wedge apart as far as I could see. That extractor Steve linked to looks more like what I'll need.

And Matt, I did beat the shit out of the ball joint... no thread protection needed. Those ball joints are toast, and I've got a set of brand new whiteline extended length ones that are going in. If I had a plasma torch, I would have just cut the damn joints off last night. They're going in the trash.

Go to the gym for three months then try again.

:lol: I'll miss the start of the season with that plan!

Blasphemy! You are such a spaghnostic.

:lol: "Spaghnostic" sounds like some sort of lung condition.

Speaking of lung conditions, how's that welding going on that MAF bung? You get an ETA yet on getting those pipes fabbed up?

The lung pipes are not yet machined, so I cannot have them lung conditioned (aka "welded") yet. I'm swinging by there today, so I'll check on 'em. I'm sure it will all be done by next week though.

Bigger pry bar. I usually end up doing pull-ups on my 3 1/2 foot bar to get those suckers out.

^See Scott. It only takes 76 pounds of down force.

I think you misunderstand the way a lever works. ;)