When I went to go get an alignment yesterday, the shop discovered that my driver side lower ball joint is shot, which is odd because the PO replaced them not long ago. Probably defective. I bought improved replacements for both sides from the DMCUK folks and they will likely arrive in the next few weeks.
I read the instructions on replacing these in the workshop manual, but the manual's instructions require complete removal of the LCA. Having done this repair before on my Jeep, it seems like it may be overkill to completely remove the LCA, but perhaps there isn't enough room in there to press out the balljoint without completely removing the LCA. For the many of you that have done this job, can you confirm if it is necessary to remove the LCA?