The ball joint will easily win this battle with zero detriment. There is zero chance of that little burr hurting the fit.
Ball joint press damaged ball joint seat on inner C. Fix?
- Thread starter jcw
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The ball joint will easily win this battle with zero detriment. There is zero chance of that little burr hurting the fit.
Good to know. Even knowing it, I’d still file them down, lol.
if on does need to dimple the fit between the ball joint and axle…does it matter which side you do? Or just do whichever is easier (ball joint, since it’s an OD)
I do the ball joint body because it is easier. It is pretty hard to get the punch in the hole directly across from the body of the inner C on the lower so you will struggle to get the dimples around the wall face at 100%. The dimples don't need to be very deep. You know how diameters work, so a pair of small divots directly across from each other will add .010 to the OD. That is big when it comes to interference fits.
gasiorv
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From a Fatigue and Damage Tolerance perspective having the discontinuity in the C would cause a significant stress riser and would eventually lead to a crack in the C. Yes the balljoint installed in interference would help negate this effect (cold working the hole and adding compressive stresses); however, it would eventually see enough tensile cycles to form a surface crack. This is why you would want to smooth out the burr. Not sure what the actual stress levels are in the fitting so the time to crack development and propagation could be so long in the future that it doesn't matter, but this is the "theoretical" reason as to why you would want to clean up the burr. The dimples in the balljoint would be less of an issue because the balljoint housing would primarily see compressive loads and if it did crack it is a replaceable part.
That's all fine from the theoritical side and while accurate, doesn't address the 100's of similar defects at the inner face when a knurled ball joint is installed. I'd much prefer to have the burr this one has over the vertical cuts that extend to the lower surface where the peeling load is the highest. The fact that we have no known instances of knurled walls causing the outside of lower load carrying hole to break off shows that while theoretical is good, practical application trumps it.
Knurled ball joints are notorious for ruining the interference fit of a smooth body ball joint due to the knurling making 100's of small cuts that extend from the edge of the entry hole to the end of the seating depth. They damage the holes in the inner C which then requires to either install another knurled ball joint which are typically substandard in durability or recreate the interference fit via some method like dimpling the body.
Smoothing out the burr would remove what's above the original surface but the discontinuity in the surface would still be there.
Since discontinuity will lead to a crack and these discontinuities look to be similar to cracks (long and skinny) already, don't they need holes drilled in each end?
I like the idea of everyone who has used splined ball joints going back and drilling out the ends of the grooves to prevent stress fractures.
I like the idea of everyone who has used splined ball joints going back and drilling out the ends of the grooves to prevent stress fractures.
Yes please and fetch up the .005 diameter bit while they are at it so the holes don't overlap.
Is there anything wrong with tacking the ball joint in place, to solve the issue of a stretched inner C hole?
The unintended consequence of all these little holes around the ball joint yokes is the whistling noise. That will really annoy people.
Why not just dimple the body, add some Loctite and be done with it using a fix that has been proven to work?
I'm just trying to figure out if they are going to try and drill the edge of the hole, or take a small round file to the end of each cut and scallop the edge.
gasiorv
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Yes, I agree the practical application trumps it and In practice I would have just cleaned it up real quick and installed the Ball Joint without ever posting anything on the internet. But theoretically all those instances will eventually lead to a crack, it is just that the number of cycles required for the crack to initiate and then propagate is so high that it becomes a non-issue within the life of the part and thus practically who cares.
No, it just needs blended smooth with a 1" radius and then tapered 20:1. That is why the mechanic makes more than me, I just need to state it on a piece of paper, but the mechanic needs to actually accomplish what is called out on the paper or at least fake it enough for the inspector to buy off on it. I can make just about anything work on paper, whether or not it is practical is another story
To add some clarity, I have yet to pull a ball joint and not find score marks from another one or more being pressed in. Yet again, we know of no lower parts of the C cracking off and failing so that means the engineers must have accounted for the stresses by overbuilding the part to prevent that sort of failure.
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