Top front wishbone ball joint

[Grandad]

Hi

Does anyone know, please, how to replace the ball joint in a front top wishbone? Thanks. Stephen

[DennisTheMenace]

The top one is pressed into the wishbone IIRC so you need to replace the whole arm . if its the boot thats gone you can get replacements from mx5 parts for around £5

[kevham]

Unless you have a press, you can't really do it and it is very easy to damage either ball-joint or wishbone or both.

If you get a replacement arm, make sure its the right one for your car because the Mk2 ball joint has a slightly longer thread (very hard to spot visually) which means that if you fit a Mk1 arm on a Mk2, the castle nut won't tighten enough to get the split pin through (bitter experience).

[Grandad]

Thanks for all of the advice guys. We too have found out the difference between various wishbones the hard way! After fitting refurbished, poly bushed wishbones and coilovers we then took the offside front suspension apart three times because we thought we weren't getting the ball joint seated well enough to get the split pin in. Eventually we discovered we'd got a Mk1 wishbone on the offside and a (correct) Mk2 wishbone on the nearside. We now realise there are at least three different specifications of top front wishbone, mainly characterised by the amount of double skinning. And we now realise that the original ones on our 2002 1.8 Sport are double skinned to the extent of the double skinning reducing the size of the hole through which the damper passes by about 10mm along the inboard edge. Furthermore the double skinning increases the thickness of the wishbone. This increased thickness and reduced hole size result in the wishbone interfering with the coilover! This, again, is not helped by the fact that the diameter of our new coilovers is about 20mm greater than the original coilovers. What fun!