Hi Irwin,

I redid the front end and changed out the left front ball joint/control arm
with a cheap FCP chinese part. The ball joint failed in short order and the
obvious reason was that the chinese supplied an ordinary threaded bolt (soft)
instead of a hardened machined taper pin to lock the ball joint into the steering knuckle. A short term cure is to turn the bolt slightly to take the slop out of
the joint, but it will quickly mash the soft threads and become useless.
I worked with the FCP tech guy, Mike, about this and sent him photos of the junk
locking bolt, and he gave me credit for the old arm and sent a Meyle control arm,
NOT Chinese, but made in Turkey. Since then my original credit for some $36
disappeared, and nobody knows a thing. Just this week I e-mailed Scott,
my former FCP hero and Go-To guy and now CEO about my credit, and haven't heard
a peep. Maybe I should e-mail the Emperor at FCP to get anywhere?

It hard for me to understand any business model that includes making and selling
useless products.

It's been two alignments here with very low mileage on the front end and suddenly I'm getting shimmy when braking on the highway. I'll be looking for the culprit soon. Hopefully it's not the Meyle ball joint.

After thinking about the goofy soft bolt used for locking the ball joint,
I asked why do they do that? The first reason might be stupidity,
then it could be that they don't want to make a hardened machined
pin that costs time and money. A third reason might be that they use that
crappy common bolt, that will allow for sloppy machining tolerances of the ball
joint locking surfaces. Hopefully the Chinese will make their military
products in this slipshod manner, and the world can chuckle at their
plywood aircraft carriers.

The bottom line for me is to call Tasca for OEM ball joints, and hope that Volvo doesn't start supplying crummy FCP quality stuff from China.

Have you noticed that Town Fair Tires offers a front end alignment with
their tires? It might be worth a look at their fine print.

I'll send photos of the jerk locking bolt on request. You can see how the
soft bolt mashes out to allow slop at the ball joint.

Good Luck, Bill