Ive just had a set of meyle heavy duty suspension arm balljoints delivered from vwh One of them is really slack one of them can be moved by hand with a little force and the other two are so tight i cant move them by hand How tight should they be when new? Id say the really slack one needs to be exchanged but im wondering if the two really tight ones are too tight or should they all be like that and will soften up after some use?
when i fitted mine i couldn`t move them at all by hand , they needed the weight of the bus , if you can move them easy by hand i`d say they are no good
Ive just spoken to vwh to voice my concerns I was told that as there an interferrance fit into the arms once there pressed in they will tighten up and they have never had a return on those ball joints before. Im going to visit a local hgv garage tmw to get a price for pressing the old ones out and new ones in so i will report back my findings once there fitted. Hopefully its just my aircraft tolerance brain worrying again
so what they are saying is the loose one may tighten up a bit and the tight one will tighten even more till its solid ? The fact that they have never had a return doesn`t mean they are correct ......Personally i would expect all four to be the same !!! when i did mine the old ones took a fair bit of persuading to get out using heat and the press was reading about 18tons before they went bang .They only took about 2tons to press the new ones in !! i had to make up a jig to enable me to press them out ......
had my ball joints changed in a local engineering shop - £5 a pop. From memory they couldn't be moved by hand. ;D
we made a jig up at work for popping them out from memory it took about 175kN (17.5 tons) to remove them and very little to replace them!
