Otto Mechanic

Thanks Scott, but from the photos I can't see you were using the Rennbay parts? There should be a zerk fitting in the photo but it isn't there. Those look like stock Porsche parts?

Otto Mechanic

Just as an aside, Mark forgot to re-install the brake shields on both front calipers. He said he'll mail them back to me.

I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Otto Mechanic

I'd like to say at this point I don't think the Rennbay kit caused any problems. The ball joints appear to be working correctly and as advertised.

Can I warrant them in perpetuity? No, of course not. But there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with them either. I'm concerned my alignment guy may have gotten a bit carried away; maybe for good reason in his mind, perhaps an attempt to protect me from terrible consequences down the road.

But, in all honesty, there doesn't seem to be a problem. I believe the Rennbay kit is working just fine.

Otto Mechanic

As usual, thanks T.

Do you ever get tired of being right all time?

Otto Mechanic

Hey Mike, Thanks for confirmation.

I didn't do the first test myself, it was done by the fellow doing the alignment.

When I got the car back up on the lift today I used the largest pair of channel lock pliers I had and I couldn't see or feel any axial play. Nothing at all, maybe 1/16th if I was being generous.

That leaves me wondering what I saw while Mark was manipulating the joint with a pair of channel locks larger than I own, much less have see before? I seriously reefed on those pliers and the joint didn't move. I really leaned into it. There are scars on the aluminum.

I'm sort of confused about this. I watched the joint move and it seemed to move enough for me to see it from a couple feet away, but five days later in my own shop under my own power, it didn't move enough to feel much less measure.

I'm not sure what to make of this.

Scott at Team Harco

Scott - you are correct - I did not use Rennbay parts on this arm. That was my point - I cannot, because it is a 968 arm. As you can tell from the second photo, there is no circlip present to remove and expose the ball joint assembly.

Oddly the left side arm on my S2 does have a zerk fitting and certainly, at some point, had a rebuild performed.

My suspicions that the 968 arm could not be rebuilt was confirmed by Travis (Rennbay) after giving him a call. Unfortunately, I now need to source another arm to correct the slop that I discovered in the 968 arm.

I keep finding little things like this on my car. For the most part it is solid and in pretty good shape considering the mileage. But there is a lot of evidence that someone had an impact on a curb or a big rock. The oil cooler mounts are twisted, a lot of plastic deflectors are damaged and there are cat-**** welds on the right side of the radiator support. Seemingly the 968 arm was installed to replace the damaged original.

This thread reminded me - that I wrote a simple tutorial on this very thing a few years ago. It can be found here: http://reutterwerk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13802

Otto Mechanic

OK, sorry for the confusion.


Very useful, not so much for the directions since I've done this once before myself, but for the diagnostic procedure you write up in the comments section after.

I replaced my ball joints just because the boots were cracked and leaking grease, I never tested them for function so until I read your comments on Reutterwerk I didn't know how to do it.

After performing the test you describe I'm confident the ball joints are fine, and certain I won't be returning to Ken's Sport Tech in the future, which is kind of sad for me since they used to be my favorite shop. Now I'll need to find another I suppose, but since I'm in the process of moving my shop to Paso Robles it's something I would have had to do anyway.

Best Regards,

Scott at Team Harco

Otto Mechanic

After a few eMail exchanges with Travis at Rennbay I'm going to perform one more test. He asked me to remove the pinch bolt and drop the a-arm, then check to see if it was possible to rotate the ball joint pin by hand. On an arm with less than a few hundred miles on it, it shouldn't be possible. I performed that test before installing the arms and it wasn't possible, but it's worth doing again just in case something bad happened either on the flatbed that took it to the shop or at the shop. It certainly passes the pry bar test though.

Since the car is already up on the rack I'll do it shortly. He feels it's really the only way to be sure.

Otto Mechanic

After performing the test Travis recommended, dropping the a-arm and trying to rotate the pin by hand, I found the ball joint to be in perfect working condition.

I'm more than a little pissed off at Mark from Ken's Sport Tech and I think I'll be writing up a scathing review of his shop on Yelp. Due to his incompetence I spent about 4 hours taking my front suspension apart and testing it. He also noted on the work order that his alignment wasn't guaranteed since the ball joints on the car were "bad". Then he left off the brake shields and asked me to come back to get them (he's about an hour each way from my shop). I'm pretty sure he was just trying to set me up for an expensive a-arm replacement. Needless to say I won't be using his shop again, nor will I recommend it to anyone I don't already hate. It's shops exactly like this that give mechanics a bad name.

At least this little nightmare is over. Apologies for any implied aspersions of Rennbay or the part, there was no problem with it and Travis was very helpful in driving this to a conclusion.

Sincerely,

Otto Mechanic

Thanks Scott.