You definately approached it better than I initially did.

My probelm was getting the spring to sit into the control arm. My car 300E, 124 did not allow me to set the spring into the control arm even with the control arm unattached to the ball joint and pushed all the way down. With the spring seated in the top I needed to compress the spring about 2 inches in order to get it to sit into the control arm. Then I could start to jack up the control arm and then insert the ball joint into the spindle.

Problems with reasembly:
1) Getting a spring compressor to fit the spring, the free rental I used initially, the type that fits in the middle of the spring did not fit through the hole in the control arm.
2) The two piece compresors, one on each side needed to be lined up a certain way so they would not hit the top mounting (cup) that the spring seats into. I ended up having the compressors at 120 degrees rather than 180 degrees opposite eachother.
3) Getting the ball joint back into the spindle. Took a lot of jigling and wiggling, finally used my big screw driver to spread apart the opening where ball joint fits into, actually left screw driver wedged in as I fitted ball joint. Beware, another guy (very helpfull) noted that if you spread the joint too much you'll have trouble getting the bolt back in. And don't forget to line up the notch on the ball joint so that you can fit the bolt back in.

That should about do it. Don't forget to torque everything up.

Good luck,
Joel

I'll work to figure out a date and place for a get together and post and see what happens.