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I've done tons of them. The easiest way I have found is to cut the head of the rivet off and drill the out the rivet. The reason is that the ball joint is in a sleeve in the end of the control arm and it has to go though 3 differnt layers before its out. The rivets are soft so they drill out easy.



I had no problem knocking the rivet head off with my air chisel. I tried punching them out with my air hammer punch, but like you mentioned, the Dakota 2WD lower ball joint is sandwiched in between an upper & lower section of steel in the lower control arm and the punch is not budging the rivets at all. Looks like I will have to drill them out or torch them out the rest of the way. If someone has other ideas, I'd love to hear them. There are 4 rivets per lower ball joint on these...