Ball Joints on 1999 Ram van

When we got new tires recently, we were told the ball joints were worn - one upper on one side and a lower on the other side. I'm inclined to just change them all out. I did this once on a Chevy pickup and was able to do it without removing the coil spring. The Dodge looks very similar. Is there a procedure somewhere for changing ball joints?

I found the on line Chilton that Alloro referred to in his 4/15/2011 posting. There is a pretty good procedure there but like most, some of the gruesome details are missing. Decided to go ahead and change the ball joints anyway. Wow what a job! Since mine is a B3500 van with HD front suspension (4,000# axle), it was hard to find the right tools. I have the two-piece steering knuckle. Found that splitting them apart makes ball joint separation easier (actually possible). Fortunately, Harbor Freight tools had a ball joint separator that fit into my air hammer that split the upper ones all right, but too small for the lowers, O'reilly's loaned me a barely big enough 2-jaw, 5-ton puller that worked on the lowers aided by some heat applied to the knuckle and a good dose of tapping with a heavy hammer. But the real challenge was to find the special socket made for removing the threaded upper ball joints from Chrysler-made upper control arms. By chance, my local CarQuest store gladly loaned me one and this along with a big herkin 3/4 in breaker bar and a 3 foot pipe extender along with a few squirts of WD-40 just barely got it moving. My 1/2 in impact wrench just made a lot of noise on it. Threading in the new joints required the same leverage. Suggestion - apply grease. Pressing in the new lower ball joints to the control arm took a really strong arm (and a big wrench). After getting them half way in I was afraid of breaking O'reilly's loaned tool so I removed them and filed off some of the knurling until it would finally seat fully in the control arm hole, still plenty tight. If you want to do this yourself, plan some time. Mine took three full days including half a day of tool and part chasing.