Alright, gang. I recently bought a Wilwood BBK for my car, and upon disassembling the car I noticed that my inner ball-joint boots were slightly torn; nothing major, "but while we're in there...."

While preparing to remove the inner ball-joint, I noticed that one of the two securing bolts will hit the axle boot during disassembly, preventing the bolt from coming upward and out.
A quick search of related threads showed a variety of methods: Drop the subframe; Remove the axle from the hub side only; Lift the engine slightly; And my favorite so far as per a friend who is a MINI shop foreman: "Just push down on the control arm harder" Riiiight.

It would seem like disconnecting the lower motor-mount completely and loosening the top side motor-mount nut just a bit might be easiest, allowing slight upward movement of the engine and providing clearance.
I'm not going to drop the subframe because all other bushings look good and are newer, so, I ask the MINI Brain Trust: What's the easiest way to get this bolt out?

 

So, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to remove the whole steering rack, or just the inner tie rod? You shouldn't have to remove the rack to change out the inner tie rod. (I replaced the inner rods on my R55 without dropping the sub-frame)

 

I used this to remove my inner tierod ends on my R50.

 

TheBigChill is looking to remove the inner Ball Joint...not Tie Rod

Remove the lower engine mount... remove the engine upper mount nut(probably need to remove it for enough room)...loosen the long Transmission mount Bolt...lift the engine with your jack (asuming the car is on jackstands)...do the passenger side. Repeat the process but put the nut back on the upper mount...remove the transmission mount bolt...lift the transmission...do the driverside. This is the least amount of work.

 

Yes- the inner ball-joint. Thank you for the tip. This is kind of what I evisioned.

@1qwkmini Just to make sure we're on the same page:
-Lower mount: Leave the lower mount attached to the frame, but remove the bolt that joins it to engine. Or remove it from frame?
-Upper Mount: Fully remove the top nut on the mount.
-Trans Mount: Are you referring to the bolt that's used for grounding when jumping? Pic attached (far right circle)


Bolt on right side

 

You can remove the lower mount completely or just remove the bolt at the oil pan and loosen the frame bolt...your choice!
Upper mount you can try it with it loosened as much as possible...but you may need to remove it completely...depends on how much room that you see that you need.
Trans...remove the lower left bolt in the photo...it will allow you to lift the transmission side to get the clearance for the ball joint bolts.

You will find that you don't need all that much clearance...you don't need to remove the bolts completely...just need enough to pull the ball joint out laterally. Then put the bolts back in the ball joint before sliding the joint and the 2 bolts back into place...if you want to remove them completely you will need to lift the engine a fair bit.

 

I just wanted to update this, because I find it frustrating when I search a topic and it's left open-ended.

I was able to change the Inner and Outer (obviously) Ball Joints easily without dropping the subframe. Just as discussed above, it required that I loosen certain engine/trans mounts, and jack up the engine/trans slightly, depending on the side I was working on. Enjoy.

 

It depends on what tools do you have and car lift