[TR] [NET] Ball joint fitment

[Randall]

My apologies for not keeping up with this thread; I'm away from home and
kind of busy with other things.

I also apologize if this is overly obvious.

> So I am a well satisfied customer but still don't understand why
> the parts don't  assemble the way they are designed to...

TRF is not a manufacturer, they are a reseller.  In certain limited cases,
they may approach a manufacturer to have parts made for them; but usually
they seek out wholesale sources (who may in turn be resellers).

But ultimately, someone (or something) made the part you bought.  Making
something like a ball joint requires several individual parts, each with a
long string of manufacturing steps.  Errors can creep in at any point, and
may or may not be detected before the part reaches you.

I dabble as a very amateur machinist myself; and I can't tell you how many
times my setup seemed OK, but the part moved in it's holder during machining
(or worse the tool moved in its holder). In other words, shift happens.

Ideally, every part would be 100% inspected, but the cost of doing that
would multiply the cost several times over.  Our military pays for that
(which is why a single mil-spec bolt can cost $10 or more); but most of us
aren't willing to pay that much.

So, bad parts sometimes make it through the pipeline.

You can count yourself fortunate that the problem was detected during
installation.  I recently had a problem with a $40 replacement part that has
effectively, so far, cost me over $8000 and seeing the Kastner Cup race this
year.  I do expect to recover some of that from the professional who
originally installed the defective part (water pump drive gear in a Chevy
V8), but I'm still stuck with an engine that I paid to have rebuilt and now
needs it again in less than 10,000 miles.  To add insult to injury, it also
leaks oil far worse than it did with 275,000 miles on the clock.

-- Randall