Well I just changed a ball joint on the front strut of my 700efi yesterday evening. It went smooth as can be other than one smashed finger. Here is how I did it step by step.
1. take off the tire
2. remove 9/16" nut and cotter pin from a-arm.
3. knock the a-arm off the ball joint and rubber gasket will come off too.
4. remove the 2 allen head bolts that hold the plate onto the bottom of strut.
5. I cut a piece of pipe slightly larger in dia. than the ball joint to about 1.25" long.
6. Place that over and around the ball joint. place a large washer on top of the ball joint. Start the nut back onto the ball joint.
7. I took a tie rod end fork and put that between washer and spacer to hold pressure on ball joint so I could tighten the bolt.
8. As pressure was held on the bolt with the fork a friend tighten the nut. As he tighten the nut the ball joint slid right out of the strut without using heat at all. It was a very simple and fast process. Took less than 15-20 minutes total to this point.
9. After having new ball joint deep freezer overnight I used a large 3/4"drive socket over the ball joint to hammer the new ball joint into place.
10. slowly tapping it in till it got started straight then hitting it harder. that's where the smashed finger came in. I missed the socket and got finger. Nice black finger this morning.
11. put plate back on with 2 allen head bolts.
12. replace rubber seal before putting a-arm back on
13. bolt a-arm back onto the ball joint.
14. put cotter pin back into ball joint and replace the tire.
15. don't forget to grease or you'll be doing this again soon.

The whole process took less than 40-50 minutes with just the ordinary tools. I didn't want to use heat on the strut due to heat transfers thru aluminum quickly and i didn't want to damage any seals around the bearings or electronics on the awd system.

I hope this helps out some. I looked in several places for post on this and some had very limited information.

 

Great post, really helpful.

 

Thanks man, I wanted to help anyone that needed to do this. I got a little of my information from over at nyrocatv.com in their tech section. But my posts is exactly how I did it.