in shop necesity

[blue*93]

hey does anyone know if a shop would have to take off the balljoint pinch bolt in order to change the front bearings and rotors? reason i'm asking is i just finished putting on a new lca, among other things, and the pinch bolt was stripped to hell. i am assuming that is why the lca came out leaving my tires at rather opposite angles. considering it was in the shop only a week b4 this happened, i am leaning quite strongly in the dirrection that he is in fact responsible, but some more hard evidence would be beneficial. i know in haynes it says you have to in order to take the hub in to get it done, but i'm not sure if they would have to take it off if they had the whole car there. cheers!

[batstiva]

Short answer is yes, in order to press out the old bearings, and press in the new ones, they would have to remove the hub assembly. Which would include dropping the LCA.

[blue*93]

sweet. that only leaves three options. (a) they were trying to kill me. (b) they didn't know any better. (c) when it got stolen 2 weeks ago they hit something soo hard it busted almost all the threads in the pinch bolt w/o dropping the lca... or wrecking the alignment. thanks, now i can follow up on this.

[GenevaDirt]

stripping the bolt out would not let the LCA come out of the pinch connection unless it was an undersized bolt or came completely out.

[blue*93]

the looseness of the pinch wouldn't cause free play in the joint, allowing it to pop out? the ball-joint is def looser than new but not too bad. i guess i don't totally understand how that connection seperates. can the steering knuckle be compromised now that it's had this happen? i will google it...

[muscle_Car1]

correct but with enough wear the bolt can have a grove in it where the ball joint hits it

[Festiva_tunner]

The ford factory manual tells you to disconnect the hub to press the bearings in and out (I.E. removing the LCA from the Hub)
The ball joint has a notch cut into it for the bolt to go through - this in combination with the pressure from the pinch joint keeps it inplace
Since you said it was a new LCA i would assume that in 4 weeks time you have not put enough wear into the ball joint to remove this notch
I then assume one of two things - the shop either put a damaged bolt back into the hub or they damaged it putting it in.
I find it hard to belive though that a simply stripped bolt would wear so excessively to allow the ball joint to fall out - perhaps as Geneva_Dirt mentioned they put the wrong bolt in
I would take the car back to the shop and make them pay for the tow bill

I had something similar happen to mine when I let a shop do the clutch job for me. The tech didnot get the bolt that holds the LCA to the body tight so two weeks later while making a right turn my left axle pulls out of the transmission leaving me stranded and late for work - the first call I made was to the shop so they could arrange for a tow truck to come get me.

[blue*93]

thanks Festiva tunner, i'm gonna definetely bring in the pinch bolt to show them. the reused axle nuts are pretty obvious... ithe new lca is actually from after the "incident" so the old bolt is pretty worn, but i asked the mech if that particular joint was alright cuz i had noticed the boot being torn just recently. he assured me it was a "really tight front end"... the ball joint is tight, but that bolt! guess i should've assumed the general public cant be trusted! appreciate the help guys. you have always been there to answer my questions. now ghostiva is feeling alot better! cheers!