2005 BALL JOINT REPLACEMENTS- Front Right Lateral Play & Lite Vibrations; Front Left Click

THE PROBLEM: Put on your problem-solving hats and come along with me for another joyous journey fixing my old 2005 Silver Prius. So here were the symptoms:
- while Prius was jacked up, I noticed that my front right wheel had minimal lateral play
- at higher speeds there was infrequent light vibrations emanating from front right wheel
- at times my front left wheel would click but only from initial movement, such as starting from my garage or coming out of a stop light

The problem was def around the wheels. And my assessment was primarily a deduction from the mass amounts of repairs i had already conducted: swapped out all 4 wheel bearing hub; replaced 2 front disk rotors; new 4 shock coil assemblies; new front left CV axle; all 4 new wheels now 6 months old. I deduced that it was both front ball joints.

WHAT I FIXED. I decided to tackle both ball joint assemblies by removing both knuckles for access.
1. BREAK WHEEL BOLTS. First break both front wheel bolts prior to jacking up Prius.
2. JACK UP ONLY ONE SIDE. Important to only jack up one side of the car first in order get access to axle bolt (170 ft-lbs of pressure) after wheel removal.


3. REMOVE ONLY ONE WHEEL AND HANG BRAKES. Start by removing only one wheel. Again, the alternate grounded wheel will provide grounded leverage hold that's much needed to break the wheel axle bolt. Next I removed the front disk rotor and then removed (17mm) and hung the brake caliper assembly with bungee cord.


4. BREAK AND REMOVE AXLE BOLT. Now I had access to the axle bolt; with a 30mm 12pt deep socket, breaker bar and cheater bar, I broke free the axle bolt. That thing is in there at 170ft-lbs, lean in hard!
5. JACK LIFT OTHER SIDE. Now is the time to break bolts from other front wheel and then jack up the other front side of Prius. Having both wheels up and free releases sway bar tension & affords ease of removal to tie rod and sway bar links.
6. FREE UP TIE ROD. With reduced sway bar tension, the removal of tie rod was easy. I used a ball joint press to pop free the stuck tie rod bolt.


7. REMOVE KNUCKLE & DUST COVER FOR BALL JOINT ACCESS. I removed both 19mm bolts of upper knuckle that’s attached to strut assembly; and then remove 3 17mm lower bolts to ball joint attached to the lower knuckle assembly. Now removed knuckle. The mission is to swap out the ball joint, but the Prius knuckle is such a tight assembly that I had to remove the dust cover for access through tight confines.

Thus a necessity to first get at the dust cover. I popped off the dust cover with flathead screwdriver and hammer.

Once dust cover was removed I reinserted the knuckle back into the socket for leverage. You can use a vice to perform this ball joint removal, but i didn't have one. Lucky there was plenty of room for me not to reinsert the axle through the bearing-knuckle; this gave me more room for full access and leverage to break free the ball joint castle bolt.

Now I was able to get access to ball joint bolt and press it out. I chose to fully remove the knuckle & used ball joint press tool for fuller access the ball joint bolt.


8. BALL JOINT SWAP. With the old cotter pin and castle nut free, I swapped out the old for the new. Once replaced, I then I tightened castle nut and cotter pin. Time for grease.

I filled the ball joint boot with grease prior to reinserting. The grease pin access hangs low when knuckle is finally reinserted, thus the need to grease fill the ball joint boot prior to reassembly. If not you will have to lift the Prius up very high in order to get underside access to the lower grease fittings.


9. REINSERT KNUCKLE. Now I reassembled the wheel. The process was in reverse as follows: insert CV axle into the knuckle, knuckle back in, tie rod, brake rotor, brake caliper. All the while turning the steering wheel for greater access to rear of brake caliper assembly. I added ant seize silver cream to my CV axle prior to reinserting.


10. AXLE IN, WHEEL IN. Now good luck with applying the 170 ft-lb torque pressure onto the axle bolt. Now the wheel; tighten bolts and lower.


11. DROP JACK, TIGHTEN WHEEL. Now drop the jack and tighten the wheel lugs.

12. NOW OTHER SIDE. Now to tackle the other side. Rinse, lather, repeat.

13. CLOSE WITH TOE WHEEL ALIGNMENT. Anytime I remove the tie rod, I risk wheel de-alignment. I used twine to perform a homemade wheel alignment procedure.
ref. Cheap Front End Alignment | PriusChat

*Ensure you use a torque wrench when required and consider thread lock on those large bolts.

SUMMARY. Success. After a quick obligatory road test on local highway, there were no further noticeable front right wheel vibrations and loose lateral play. Too early to tell, but my front left wheel is no longer clicking from initial movement, such as starting from my garage or coming out of a stop light. Thanks for reading.

 

Ty. Just cleared 134k. She is really a strong workhorse.
I just got back 2 weekends ago from a 1000m roundtrip from KansasCityMO to StPaul; nice smooth ride.

 

The 2005 silver, is probably 145,000miles now; however i sold it off to my older sister. Enabled me room to promote to a 2009 Camry Hybrid. Can only have 2 cars at a time, max; leaving me with 2005 Prius & 2009 Camry hybrid.