Dear Vanagoneers!

     I have been reading the various postings that= came up under a search for  "replace Upper Ball joints" &nbs= p;(alot of reading) and trying to learn & understand how to do this.
          What really cau= ght my eye were a couple postings that said this is easy, you can do it in l= ess than an hour and you dont need to do a realignment after!  Well thi= s got me all excited, but then I found that some of those "posters"= ; no longer had valid email addresses, (I mean they had changed their addres= ses , anyway I got returned mail, undeliverable) and the others did it on NO= N-SYNCRO models or from a much older vanagon.
      Have any of you replaced yours on a SYN= CRO??  Did you have to remove anything else to get the ball joints off?=  like the brakes?  Did you have to compress the big suspension sp= ring?  Did you have to use a ball joint press?  Were you able to r= emove the joint from its mounting (or holder, for lack of a better word!), &= nbsp;or did you have to remove the mount as well??
          I have been loa= ned an air powered pickle fork which i hope to use to to remove just the joi= nt.....
           BTW, I ha= ve a Bentley manual,  its hopeless and useless!  Not even one comp= lete sentence on how to remove these joints!  And thats the way its bee= n for every job I've had to do on the Syncro (and there have been many!). &n= bsp; Not only does he NOT tell you how to do anything in this book, but= he has all these diagrams and illistrations, and he never tells you what an= y of these thousands of parts are called!  So its very difficult and co= nfusing to communicate with anyone else about this stuff.  I dont know = what to call any of these parts!!

Thank you, Vanagoneers, for your invaluable help!!