Ok- I screwed up.

Got this brand new, pretty nice, '68 142 recently. Planning on keeping it as a daily-driver.

Front end was a little wobbly- so I called around to all the local parts stores and checked availabillity for tie-rods and center-link ends.
Had moderate sucess, or so it seemed....

It seems I had one of those rare allignments of the stars that caused every parts store in town to get it wrong....


But I didn't know that when I knocked out the tie rods and center link...
Now they are less trustworthy than before, so I am loathe to put 'em back in.

Hell, if I'd known "1-day turnaround" meant 5 days....

Turns out that the '68 - or at least my '68 is the early series or something.
Shaft of the centerlinks are thinner on my car than the one centerlink my local import guys were able to turn up....

Hell, I was innitally so over-confident that I was calling around for price comparisons. Now it turns out IPD doesn't even have 'em in the online catalog.

Missed my window for calling IPD yesterday and today.

Getting really nervous about availabillity.

I suppose I could drill out the ends of the steering and idler arm or grind the later series to fit, but, if at all possible, I don't want to have to do anything like this. It's a really nice car and I don't want to be just whipping stuff over to the bench grinder.