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Date:         Thu, 10 Aug 2000 09:52:59 -0400
Reply-To:     The Bus Depot <ron@netcarrier.com>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         The Bus Depot <ron@netcarrier.com>
Subject:      Re: Defective Ball Joints
Comments: To: "Steven X. Schwenk" <sxs@concentric.net>
In-Reply-To:  <39922B81.78D610D1@concentric.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

> 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


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