Well both of mine where like that when i purchased a supposedly restored car in 2001
happy in my ignorance, i drove it like that for 15 years and suffred no ill effect what so ever.
other than it looked rubbish when i actually had a look.
having picked through pleanty of parts, dug stuff out of wrecked cars and assisted with mates cars over the years its quite common to find one a bit wonky. even when in straight you will find inconsistencies in the pressed steel arm hole that mean the edge of the balljoint head does not contact the arm all the way round.
replacing them resulted in two perfectly installed balljoints that would not torque up properly, so i ended up getting replacment arms and starting again.
Whilst i take on the point that some resistance to coming undone is supplied by the head of the balljoint abutting the rasied edge of the pressed in hole. the balljoints are still installed and torqued to a specific torque. Regardless of how the resistance to their turning is achived a specific torque is a specific torque thats just how it is.
The restsiance to turning increased to a specific level that is assumed to be good enough to make sure they don't start to turn back the other way or pop out. rightly or wrongly straight in or crooked that balljoint has cut itself a brand new good solid thread in that arm that is strong enough to achive a torque figure that mopar felt was appropriate.
The top of that joint has been wound down to a stop and its pressing down over a smaller area. the friction between the top of that joint and the arm its in, will be higher... becasue its pressing on a smaller area.
A heavy box will slide over the floor no problem. the force it applies to the floor is spread across the whole base, if the same box has 4 spikes mounted on the base it won't slide across the floor anymore....
look at the underside of a chrylser flyhweel bolt the head is back cut from the stem leaving only the outer rim to press on the flywheel. wind it and a completely flat underside headed bolt in to the same torque, and the chrysler one is less lilely to come undone. there is greater friction between head and flywheel when the head is undercut. they would not have done the extra machining work on the bolt if it wasn't worth it
the picture above shows wrongness but it aint as wrong as you all make out
it offends sensibilities more than it puts the guy at risk of it popping out.
The point i'm making is that the risk of it not achieving the desired torque and the joint popping out increases if you take it out and try and rectify the situation... a set of arms can put up with 1 maybe 2 balljoint replacements and then thats it...scrap, everey rmoval and replacment moves you closer to needing to tack weld the joint to the arm.
looks **** but is solidly mounted
looks great but achived in an arm that has been stretched by the previous intsall
take yer pick
Dave
