Bones, balls and sweat

 Pretty quick fix for me, although it was hard work...

So looking at the parts before I removed them, they looked corroded but not too bad:

It took me a few days to get hold of GBS because of the bank holiday but the new wishbone and ball joint arrived next day and then the state of the old ones is more obvious:

Consensus is that the lock nut somehow got loose and the ball joint rod has been vibrating in the wishbone for gawd knows how long; long enough to wear it effectively smooth and so it popped out on a small country lane.

Getting the old ball joint out was much easier than I expected, as was getting the wishbone off - access to the bolts is pretty easy.

However, after that, it went a bit pear-shaped...I thought I'd better check the ball joint screwed into the wishbone - should be simple, yeah? Oh no....

After clearing powder coat at the end, the ball joint initially wouldn't screw in at all. By sheer luck, I had the right size tap for the wishbone thread (M18x1.5) and I ran that down the wishbone. There was some resistance but not much and after that, the ball joint started going in, although not very smoothly. I got about 2/3 of the way down and it stopped. This wasn't far enough down for what I needed so I started putting a bit more effort in (holding the ball joint in my vice and using the wishbone as leverage to turn it). This was, I soon found out, a BAD idea. I tried unscrewing the ball joint but no joy - it was stuck fast!

At this point, I gave GBS a call, to check I wasn't doing anything wrong. I got through to Matt and the first thing he said was, "yeah, we get that sometimes. The thread in the wishbone isn't long enough - we have to chop 5-10mm off the ball joint rod". Well,  thanks a fecking lot...now you tell me.

So I had obviously reached the end of the thread and tried to go further, jamming it in good and proper. I went back in, using a hairdryer and lots of WD40 to try unwind it. After about an hour of sweating and swearing, it finally came off but it was butchered:

I was planning on sending it all back to GBS and insisting on a free replacement as it was their fault IMO but I have a Wales trip in less than 2 weeks and a show on Sunday that I was looking forward to, so on the advice of the SKCC Massif, I had a go at fixing it.

That damaged thread on the ball joint rod was, coincidentally, about 10mm from the end, the amount GBS said I should hack off anyway. The wishbone thread looked like it had some damage in it but the tap went down it OK, so I hacked off the 10mm, deburred it, copper grease to prevent future corrosion and it just went in far enough to match the other side of the car.

After that, it was fairly simple; bushes in (repeating one of the first ever jobs I'd done on Zedster 7 years ago!), wishbone back in, ball joint in the hub, all tightened up and job done:

You might be able to see how badly mangled that lock nut is from being held in my vice while I tried to get the ball joint out.

I've left that IVA cover off and used paint to mark it so I can easily check in future if that locknut gets loose.

The other side seemed pretty solid, so I've left it alone, except for removing the IVA cover and painting the locknut.

Test run tomorrow and hopefully it will all be OK.