> I went to install upper ball joints i bought from a list vendor and find
that
> they are defective.  The part that inserts in  the upper control arm and
> is held on by 2 allen bolts is not properly machined.  This prevents it
from
> seating properly.   When you compare it to the original, you can see
> that there is about 1/8" of metal that still needs to be machied off, or
at least
> ground off before the thing will seat properly.  Both of the ball joints i
> bought were like this.  Has anyone else seen this problem?

One of the major German manufacturers had a production run like this several
months ago.  I shipped four of them one week (same brand I'd been shipping
for years), and got all four back from customers because they were machined
wrong.  So I switched to a different brand to eliminate the risk of
receiving any more from that same production run.  I would suspect that a
lot of these incorrectly machined ball joints got into circulation, since
the distributor that sold them to me was a large outfit that also sold to
thousands of auto parts stores and garages nationwide.  However, if you had
gotten them, you'd immediately know when you went to install them, since
they simply would not fit.  The ones I ship now are from a different German
manufacturer (Febi/Bilstein) and I have never gotten a single one back.

- Ron Salmon
  The Bus Depot, Inc.
  http://www.busdepot.com
  (215) 234-VWVW