bottom ball joint

[josephp6man]

hi all,
just to let you know. changed a top and bottom ball joint on a customers car today. got the leg off and on the bench. cleaned the s--t out of the bottom ball joint so i could remove the clip before removing the ball joint. youv'e guessed it NO clip. it beggars belief ? after removing it, the first section of the spleens had been ground a bit to ease it in. god knows how it stayed in. any way all done now with two new ball joints and a new clip i had ( last one ) looked at other side and clip was in that side. new battery bought and will be road tested tomorrow before MOT.
ian

 

[harveyp6]

The clip not being there isn't a problem in itself, it's only there as a way of telling the installer that the joint is all the way home. On it's own it's not capable of holding the joint in place. But it was never fitted in this case as you say, because although they can come out, they can't fall off totally. It's the splines being ground away that's the real problem, as that could make the joint loose in the leg, and you would at least get some warning of that with the circlip in place as that would be forced out, as it is the first you'd know is when the joint pulled out of the leg, as we've seen on here before. Personally I'm not sure that I could be certain the joint hadn't been moving in the leg, and for that reason I think I'd have used another one, rather than refitting the one that was on there originally..