a very rough Audi weekend

[cobram at juno.com]

Marc Swanson <mswanson at sonitrol.net> writes:

> almost did.  I came about 6 inches from spanking the wall.

> I've got 4 OE bolts on order.  I'm still confident in my selection
> of
> stainless for other stuff.. but I thought I was pretty careful
> about
> when and where I used non-stock bolts.  Clearly this is not an
> acceptable location for one.

OEM or not OEM, if it's popped out once, it'll happen again.  BTDT.  It
may take a while, but you'll get a popping sound down the road, might
take a year, might take 2 weeks. BTDT.  Brand new control arm/ball
joint/hardware will only buy you time.  You need to change the bearing
housing that the ball joint slips into.

The slide bolt alone is not enough once the ball joint has even
marginally chewed the inner sleeve,

I think this problem was noticed by someone at Audi, if you look at the
new cars, they have a bolt going through the Top of the ball joint to
hold it in place and keep it from popping out.

> >  I check them and
> > rotate 180* or to a nice clean spot.

Useless once the sleeve has worn.

> >  Also I use
> > Loctite blue on my taper/press fits.  Ball joint and
> > tie-rod ends.

BTDT-locktite acted as a lubricant ?!? and the ball joint was popping
less than a day later, with new hardware, control arm and shaving down of
sleeve slit (to tighten it up.)

>
> I went one step further and used a nylock style lock nut.  They seem
> to work very well.

The "oval" peened locknuts are what the dealer supplies.


In an emergency, with a piece of pipe a jack and an assistant you can pop
the balljoint back in, well covered in 2 stage epoxy, tie it down with a
web of mechanics wire, and Carefully ferry the car for many miles,  if
you really had to.  After which you upgrade to AAA gold and never have to
worry about McGuyvering the thing. BTDT

FWIW- Chris Semple at Force Five sold me the complete strut assembly
(plug and play except for the bearing), once installed it's all tight
again and that's one less thing to worry about.

BCNU,
http://www.geocities.com/cobramsri/

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