I bought a pre-made swivel hub from minisport a couple of months ago. The one that comes prefitted with ball joints and apparently shimmed properly.
This past weekend I went to replace my tie bars (they had a slight S kink to them), obviously being a mini one of the bolts was rusted on so I removed the lower suspension arm along with the tie bar and hammered it out. When I went to replace everything, needing to refit the lower ball joint I found that the threads were completely ruined. Bare in mind this is a new ball joint, installed once and removed once both times the fitting and removal went very smoothly without needing to overly hammer/bash the ball joint to get it out.
Simply put, the ball joint's tapered shank bolt is utter and complete garbage. It has less than 2000km on it and has been treat well when serviced. I just don't understand. The grade of material used seems also quite suspect. It does not seem to have been hardened and is easily scuffed, bent and marred.
I have several genuine ball joint kits that can use and replace that bolt with. The difference in quality is ridiculous. The bolt is hardened, for example.
the nuts were not stainless were they?
Just realised you asked if the *nut* was stainless, not the *bolt*. Yes the nut was stainless.
sorry this may have been your problem. also not a stainless NUT is totally incorrect for the useage.
stainless has a habit of galling (others may correct me on this) and as you torqued it up that is what happened. when you came to undo the nut I bet it was stiff as it was eating up all the thread.
I used a swivel hub kit which came 100% assembled from minisport. Any nuts/washers present were re-used.
Are you sure the nut wasn't simply "bright zinc" plated ? although you can get super grade stainless steels they usually need to be hardened (I have to do this for an aircraft engine company) but and here's the big but ! they would be very expensive for this type of kit and I would almost certainly say they are not ST or have not been made using the correct material and or heat treatment methods.
The swivel kit consisted of a threaded pin (with ball) these where fully case hardened steel (PS not EN8 
) and the cup or nut part was induction hardened around the domed section, this is a very critical process and requires a lot more science and experience than I would like to write on here.... but its to do with the time spent in the induction coil.
PS, Stainless steel is prone to galling, and a few methods are used to counteract it, 1) heat treatment, 2) plating and 3) thread rolling and burnishing. and in some cases it's a combination of 2 of the above, but they all cost money so don't expect your mini parts to go through 2 of the processes, I thread roll most of my parts....
Edited by MRA, 12 June 2017 - 04:09 PM.
