Bad DeLorean Lower Ball Joint

I went to go have an alignment done this past weekend and the shop discovered that the lower ball joint on the driver side is shot. I found this odd since the previous owner had replaced these just a few thousand miles ago. I discovered that the batch of lower ball joints that the previous owner had installed were faulty and a poor design. This caused many to fail prematurely, as noted by many owners on the DeLorean forum at www.dmctalk.org.

In order to never have another lower ball joint failure, I purchased upgraded ones from the DMCUK club for $130 for the pair. I might as well replace both of them now. Below is a video that I took that shows how much play the ball joint has and why it needs to be replaced:

While looking through the list of past repairs on my DeLorean, I also discovered that the previous owner had replaced the original lower control arms with aluminum ones, which is great because I will not have worry about them rusting out like so many that I have seen.

Below is a picture of the front driver side suspension that I will be disassembling to replace the ball joint:

 

Since it's Christmas time and I just barely ordered the parts, the DeLorean may be out of commission for a while until the parts arrive. All I can do for now is wait. I'll post an update once I have these installed.