Itinerant Air-Cooled

Greetings.

Has anyone found a vendor and/or brand name of quality pieces

Most people have been buying from BusBoys, from what I understand. They will press the joints for you.

There have been reports of excessive stiffness in the joints (Amskeptic is a case in point), but as always, YMMV.

bretski wrote:Most people have been buying from BusBoys, from what I understand. They will press the joints for you.

There have been reports of excessive stiffness in the joints (Amskeptic is a case in point), but as always, YMMV.

Yer damn right my joints are stiff, try being 48 years old.
Colincrab
(the BusBoys torsion arms and ball joints are still ridiculously stiff after 50,000 miles plus. They are unusually temperature-sensitive, when cold they free up a bit, when it is hot they get worse)

My mechanic can get them from a local supplier but I dunno the name brand as of yet. A few shop in the bay Area get their parts from IMC (?) A warehouse type of deal.

When I do mine, the first thing is to measure the diameter of the old ones vs the new ones. Then I'll probably try to install zerks

That is unacceptable. You need some sort of refund/exchange from Bus Boys, or at least point em' to one of these threads if you haven't already.
I got a bad Westy sink pump from them, my only experience buying from them. I don't like their catalog, too confusing.

I have had good luck with the ball joints on my bus. I bought them localy, and had them pressed in. Most of the parts I use come thru IMC. I will look for reciepts. I have 50k on them and don't remember the brand.

we have a limited supply of NOS german balljoints, just arrived. i have not seen german made balljoints for some time. nowadays the lemforder balljoints are made in brazil, these german ones are probably at least 10year-old stock.

http://germansupply.com/xcart/customer/ ... ctid=17412

Those would be the standard diameter?

yes, standard diameter. even though the parts books and factory manuals refer to oversize ball joints, i have never seen them. out of curiosity, i spoke today to a friend of mine who has been in the VW parts business for 35 years and who's knowledge because of this is amazing. he cannot recall ever seeing or installing an oversize bus balljoint.

when i was speaking to my friend today he mentioned something else that might explain the tight balljoints issue. apparently the balljoints made in italy by OCAP are slightly larger than they should be - perhaps they are made to the .3mm oversize spec? - my friend was getting complaints about the OCAP balljoints from shops that were installing them, that they needed too much pressure to get them into the arm. if you were successful in getting them in (by heating the arm, for instance), the end result would be that the balljoint was very tight because it became compressed in the arm. then the steering would be tight and be very lazy to return to centre. i have done many sets of rebuilt torsion arms with the nakata brand ball joints and never had any issues. i have driven many of the vehicles that were done myself.

germansupplyscott wrote: the end result would be that the balljoint was very tight because it became compressed in the arm. then the steering would be tight and be very lazy to return to centre.

HAAarrrgh, mmmpphttt, #$*()#*($&_!$

Unfortunatly, I coudn't determine the brand on my balljoints. Can't find reciept, and can't read anything on balljoints themselves. I purchased them from Wolfsburg Moterworks here in Seattle about 3 yrs ago.

bus71 wrote:can't read anything on balljoints themselves.

look on the bottom of the joint. you have to look very closely and perhaps clean the joint with a wire brush. most joints have some marking stamped on them.

this is the ocap logo stamp. this is taken from a tie rod end, but the balljoints have a similar stamp:


this is the lemforder logo stamp:

I will make another atempt with a magnifying glass. My eyes just aren't what they used to be!

So you carry the Lemforder in limited supply and the Nakata.

yes, exactly. i had some of the ocap also but when i heard about this possible issue i removed them from the website.