Many of you are aware that my grandson and I have been working on the
Yellow Peril, a 1973 145E with an abused engine.

We started in again today. I took the upper balljoints out months ago and
replaced them with a pair I had bought on ebay, manufactured by the Brit
parts king, Quentin-Hazell (sp?). They fit right into the upper A-frames
so we thought everything was fine. Today we tried to install the front
spindle forgings/hubs/rotors/calipers and found the tapered pin of the
ball joints to be VERY loose in the tapered hole in the spindle forging, and
in fact much smaller than the OEM ball joints we removed (in desperately bad
shape).

Specifics of the tapered pins are as follows:

OEM ball joint:
Threaded portion: 1/2"-20 UNF
Tapered portion tapers from 0.570" to 0.654" over a distance of 11/16".

Q-H ball joint:
Threaded portion: 7/16"-20 UNF
Tapered portion tapers from 0.485" to 0.574: over a distance of 11/16".

I attempted to put a spacer between the nut and the spindle forging tapered
hole on one side and was able to tighten it up but rather than tightening on
the taper it was tightening on the inside of the ball joint socket and would
not swivel.

Have any of you ever experienced this problem with misfit ball joints?
Most of the Q-H parts I have used were generally OK but needed more grease
before installation - they seem to come without lubricant in them.

Do you suppose these ball joints are for some other car and just happen to
be the same outside diameter as the Volvo item, or perhaps they were
assembled with the wrong components?

If anyone has a spare pair of upper ball joints for a 140/164 at a bargain
price I'd love to hear from you!
--
George Downs, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, Central US