Ball joint socket size and where to purchase?
Your ball joints were tack welded in? :wtf:
That is actually pretty common. It is (or was) not at all uncommon for a guy to take his car in to have front end work done, and the mechanic did not know they were threaded. They got manhandled out and the new ones got pressed in. Then they got tack welded in place. Maybe the mechanic saw the error and tried to cover it up. OR the ball joints were hopelessly stuck and the threads were damaged during removal.
IN FACT, I worked at a car parts place for 5 years after I got out of the Air Force while I was going back to school to get an MBA (73-78). I was the manager on duty one night when a guy came in demanding not only a refund on some JUNK upper ball joints that popped out, but he wanted us to pay the bill for new upper control arms, ball joints and labor. The company would have paid it if I had not been on duty. I asked him what happened, and he told me that he did all the work himself, but he did take the upper control arms to a place to have the old ball joints pressed out and the new ones pressed in. I got some new ones off the shelf, showed him the threads and explained the error of his ways. He was upset in the very beginning, but he calmed down a lot after that. He was so decent about it that I warrantied out the ball joints for him and suggested either new control arms or tack welding.
I have done complete rebuilds on several Mopar front ends. The first time was before the internet, and I did not know about the ball joint sockets. I used a large pipe / monkey wrench, and it worked fine. It will leave a few marks on the new ball joint during installation, but it does work!