Making a spanner socket for a dana 44 ball joint adjuster.
Here is a little tool-making interlude in the saga of my 10 bolt to dana 44 axle swap in my wife’s ‘82 diesel 4x4 suburban. Turns out I had to change knuckles. The dana 44 knuckles used a drag link that mounted on top of the arms and nearly (within a 1/4″) hit the springs. So I had to swap on my 10 bolt knuckles that used a bottom mount drag link. I knew I would have to adjust the ball joints as part of this swap, but didn’t have the spanner wrench. I suppose I could have bought one, but making a custom spanner isn’t that hard. The first step is to find a socket to modify, I keep a large selection of cheap sockets just for this sort of thing, they’re harder than mild steel, but not so hard that a hacksaw won’t cut them. Plus they already have a square drive for a ratchet (or torque wrench in this case). I needed a deep socket to fit over the ball joint stud.
It was a pretty good fit, just needed a little ground off the OD. Then I made the vertical cuts with a hacksaw.
Then hogged out the majority with a hand grinder, if I was making a tool that only fit two notches I could have cut in from the sides with the hacksaw.
Then it was just hand fitting with a bastard file.
Fits nicely, back to the swap next time.
