I have a 2004.5 Polaris 500 HO. I was going threw a river and must of hit something big. My lower ball joint poped out and when that happen my front drive shaft also poped out. It is no problem to fix the drive shaft and boot. My problem is the ball joint poped out and there seems to be material left in my strut.
My question is how do I get the rest of the material out of my strut? The material looks like a thin piece of metal which may make up a canister for the ball joint to fit in.
Any idea's would be apreciated.

 

Remove the ball joint plate and heat the strut up with a small torch and if you can grab any part of the ball joint casing with vice grips you should be able to knock it on out. Or if you have access to a slide hammer with with an "L" shaped adapter you can slam it out after heating it up. Think others have even spot welded bolts so they could remove em. Not a fun job,but I used a good slide hammer most of the time with good luck. OPT

 

To remove outer bearing races from blind holes in a casting, run a quick bead around the inside with a welder and it will shrink the race so it will fall out. Don't know if the casing you are referring to is to light for this to work or not as I have not had the pleasure of getting in to this specific area as of yet.

Fred

 

Thanks again OPT. I heated it up with a small propane tourch and it came out very easy. Just a note to anyone replacing ball joints that the ball joint has a small hole in it for greese. This has to be lined up with the greese fitting in order for greese to get to the ball joint.

 

In looking a bit closer at the hole in the ball joint. It has nothing to do with how the greese feeds the ball joint. Sorry for the misinformation. Thanks again OPT.

 

The replacement updated ball joints are supposed to be greased for life Plus makes the zerk fitting useless unless you can drill a hole for the grease in the ball joint body that will actually be able to take grease. Think some have actually done this ? OPT