I'm sure this is a stupid question,but again I find myself in unfamliar grounds. Is there any place in Chattanooga that does a good bug alignment? Mine seems a little off,one to many trips through the construction areas. On kinda the same subject who can press in ball joints mine look shot and I was plannin on rebuilding my front end anyways.

I can,but it would be possibly a week or two because of the "slab" deal in my work area

Scott, If you think you have bad ball joints you can check the lower ones by sticking a big screwdriver or some kind of pry bar between the spindle  and  the ball joint (where it goes through the spindle) and try to pry them apart. You can have a little play,but if its more  than a 1/4" you need to replace them. The top ball joints seem to last a lot longer. The lower ball joints have a nasty habit of "hopping" out of the spindle if they are worn out and you take a speed hump a little to fast. Talk about the "slamed" look except the 90 degree neg. camber looks a little strange. :lol:  If the joints feel OK and just the boots are bad I would drive the thing until they  were worn out. Just keep a check on them. You cannot buy just boot .

Have I missed something ? What the heck is a lowered ball joint ?  Is this something new ?  I thought you just cranked your beam down when you wanted to tear the front apron off. :?

Always best to play on the safe side.  I just installed sway-a-way adjusters on the front beam of the '67.  (I already had CB Performance 2 1/2 inch dropped spindles)...  I elected to put the "lowered" type ball joints on mine as well, even though I will only actually be lowering the torsion arms themselves about 1-2 inches.   As you said, probably not needed, but this way of thinking has, if nothing else, at least kept me off the side of the road.  A broken ball joint will definitely leave you there.

By the way, D.J...I prefer to call it "scuffing" the front apron, not "ripping it off"....just kind of sounds cooler.
The end result, I'm sure you can guess, however, is the same.
But, Nothing's cooler than having to tell your friends you can't meet them in THAT parking lot because you might "scuff" your front end because it's like so low and therefore you're like so cool and stuff.

O.K., you're right...I am an idiot.

Have I missed something ? What the heck is a lowered ball joint ?  Is this something new ?

I'm thinking that a friend of mine put Thing ball joints in an adjustable front beam he built 10 years or so back.  He said they had more travel.  Or did I just dream that up?   :-k   My memory is getting better and better as I get older.  Sometimes I remember things that didn't even happen!   :lol:

RetBugTech:  Never tried the Thing Ball Joints/Arms install to a beetle beam.  The joints like what we are talking about here look identical to a standard beetle ball joint but are clearanced differently for the increased longitudinal movement due to the changed releation of position of the spindles to the torsion arms.  Simple enough, I guess I just like using a bunch of really big words in one sentence... Makes 'em think I'm smarter than I am.  

Bugnut:  I just installed the adjusters in my beam.  That was difficult enough (the tubes are very thick and don't like to be cut.)  That I might entertain the notion of doing.  The only problem I have with attempting to narrow the beam is that if not done exactly on the money, alignment/tire wear problems will absolutely be a problem..With the adjusters, I installed one at a time, therefore the integrity of the beam alignment was not compromised.  Unless you have some sort of jig mocked up to narrow the beam, this can't be guaranteed.  I'm currently snatching up tires and tie rod ends, etc to see what the finished product will be like and can give you an update when I'm done as to what the outcome will be (whether or not narrowing will be necessary on your set-up)  To think about...what size tire do you want to go with on the front?  Also, keep in mind if you do narrow the beam, you'll need to buy narrowed torsion leaves as well as tie rod assemblies (or cut and weld the old sleeves which I would strongly advise against and would not do on my own car and certainly not any one else's. )  These things considered, you might be best to pick up an already narrowed/adjustable beam from one of the aftermarket sources. Some food for thought while I finish up my front end and then you can swing by and see what it looks like on my car and we'll go from there.
Later.

Forgot to  mention...My one regret about the purchase of the "lowered" type ball joints is that they arrived in colorful, rather festive EMPI packaging with those most famous words tatooed across the part number section of the package..."MADE IN TAIWAN"...probably would have been better off pushing the german stuff to its limits...still thinking about it, haven't actually installed them in the arms yet/waiting till I get the tie rods to put them all in at the same time.
Made in Taiwan....suckie suckie
Made in Germany....nicht sucken
Or something like that