[V8] Ball joints, etc

[Professor GT gmail]

Wow, 

How spirited an exchange!

The "spirit" of this forum is to "help" each other. That said, sometimes mis-information masquerades as that of being in the "spirit" to help, but can actually be misleading.

This falls under the heading of, "just because someone on the net says so, doesn't mean a hill of beans, other than those beans may be causing you to have gas!"

It's still a "buyer beware" world out there, and I think the best way to sum it up is in this analogy:

Years ago (25+) when I was in diesel school, my group had to finish the installation of a large Mack V-8 that the previous two semesters of students rebuilt. We completed the installation of the engine and trans and got the thing fired up. It had an engine knock that our instructor told us was air in the injection system. After numerous attempts at bleeding the system we went for a ride with our instructor. He told us to "brake it in" properly we had to vary the load, so he drove it like a madman getting on and off the throttle very heavily. As we pulled back in the yard guess what? Still had the knock! He said take your morning break and then bleed it again!

Well, when we attempted to bump the engine over we found that it was locked up solid! When we could not even turn the crank by hand we pulled the oil pan to find that the connecting rods welded themselves together, and  to the crank! They were all blue!

The problem was that the machine shop that turned the crank did not radius the journals properly, so there was no rod side clearance. The students who assembled the engine never took the five minutes it would have taken to check it.

Now to the crux of the matter!

It doesn't matter that the machine shop was paid to do the right job, and in fact they should have, but we had no claim with them, because it is the responsibility of the tech who assembles the engine to check his parts for proper fit, BEFORE final assembly, and to assume NOTHING!

Yes, the ball joint debacle was an expensive lesson to learn, but at least no one got hurt! The guy who sold the parts is doing just that, selling parts. Maybe the parts were the correct ones based upon having a stock vehicle, or based upon his lookup data, but like the Mack engine, it is the responsibility of the tech who does the work to verify proper fitment. Now that the parts have been damaged due to "improper installation" it is not the fault of the seller, and no claim can be rightfully made against him/her.

A hard pill to swallow, but a medicine that has done it's job, if the lesson has been learned.

Most of us that have been around a while call it the school of hard knocks! Been there, done that more times than I myself would like to admit. 

Sometimes you're the dog, sometimes you're the fire hydrant! 

Sorry about the bad luck with those fire hydrant red ball joints!

P.S. Is there any way to post an attached document (PDF) to this forum , or is the only way to offer up a document to add a link to a remote site that hosts the file?

Thanks,

ProfessorGT
(Sent from my iPhone4)