Ball joint to big for LCA...

[Baker819]

This is all about my 1969 C10 swb fleetside

I bought new upper and lower control arms (Dorman) from CPP because my stockers had bad threads for the bushings. And I am using Moog K6023 lower ball joints.

I have never installed lower ball joints before but I did a bunch of research on installation (because I certainly didn't want to buy A-arms again) so I went forth with installing the lower A-arms.

I am an apprentice machinist buy trade and should have measured the parts before install... I didn't. I aligned the first ball joint with the arm and pressed it in half way with a standard installation tool.

I went to my uncles house for him to double check my work because I had it pressed half way in and it seemed like it was 3/64" crooked. He said if it was that far in than it would self align which made since but I was unsure. We pressed it the rest of the way and the ball joint only touched the LCA in one spot (maybe 1/2" wide) and the there was about a 1/32" gap the rest of the way around. Does this sound normal?

When we went to press the other ball joint in it seemed like it was just to big so we measured everything. The ball joint was 1.976" and the hole was 1.956 on the top of the hole and 1.935 on the bottom (where you start to press the ball joint in). These measurements are with 85% of the paint removed.

This makes me wonder if I distorted the other LCA if I pressed the ball joint in with out fixing the hole first. All the metal has to go some where.

I know its just a stamped hole in the LCA and I am not expecting perfection for the company who made them. I plan to at least clean the hole up with some hones I have and get it the same size all the way down. The big question I am unsure of is what clearance should I have between the LCA and the ball joint. At the ship yard we press lots of stuff that costs tons of money and normally have the pieces the same size or .001-.002"clearance between the two. I know the ball joint has splines on it and that is completely new to me... I'm not sure how that effects the clearance requirement.

I would just call Moog but its Saturday night and I don't want to wait that long haha. Thank you for any help you can provide. I know a lot of people would worry about some of my "issues" but I really want to learn the correct way instead of messing things up for years and years. I also never plan on selling my truck so I want to do it correct.