Your pickle fork fared better than mine when I did a ball joint replacement! You are right about the metal being soft, I was beginning to think the thing was made out of lead! It will work though, but I had to hit the thing with a small sledge at least 30 times (each time the darn thing would pop off the joint and I'd have to pick it up and reposition it - frustrating for sure!), and nothing was reusable so I had to put new control arms and tie rods on too.

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87 300D - Running on Veggie oil; 260,000 plus miles; Original #14 head