TRQ Front Lower Ball Joint Set Compatible with 1990-2005 Mazda Miata

I was going to rate this product just 2 stars, but the price for a pair was unbeleivably great. Really couldn’t believe it. I just needed to do 1 ball joint but having the pair was nice I did however have 3 issues which made installation a pain, and left a me worried of the overall build quality for long term durability.Problem 1: fitment part 1. When I went to put the ball joint into the lower control arm, the unit was very difficult to fit into the lower control arm. I lined it up best I could and could almost get it to go in with a dead blow hammer but had loads of issues. I put the worn out OEM one in again to make sure the control arm wasn’t just messed up, the factory one slid in and out with no resistance. I ended up having to grind away a small amount of material on the new replacement parts to get them to fit.Problem 2: Fitment part 2. Once I got the ball joint into the lower control arm, I slid the bolt that goes all the way through and put the nut on it. Once that was in, I couldn’t get the fully threaded bolt in through the top. I could get it started and then turn it a few times finger tight to ensure no cross threading, but I couldn’t drive the bolt all the way down to fully seated. I ended up having to take the first bolt out, then seating the others bolt all the way and then hammering the ever living dickens out of the through bolt until enough of the threads at the end protruded to catch the nut and bring it in all the way.Problem 3: False advertising. The pictures here show that the ball joint has a castle but and suggests that it would even come with a replacement cotter pin, however the stud on the ball joint has a hex key cutout and secured with a nylon locking nut. I did not have the tools needed to do the job with this fastener, and ended up having to rig something up. If I had hex headed sockets, that would have been great but I had to use a small “L”-shaped Allen key held in place with vice grips, and a large adjustable wrench I could barely fit into the work space (didn’t have my open ended 22mm wrench with me either) and had to drive the stupid nylon nut in 1/12 of a turn at a time flipping the clunky adjustable wrench over and turning the suspension geometry to give me clearance for the tools. I also don’t trust the nylon to hold as safely as a cotter pin would. Because of all of this, uninstalling the old ball joint took 15 minutes, and putting in the new one tools 1.5 hours. I would have paid more for the fastener design on muni factory ball joint if I knew that this was where I was saving money.Would not use these again unless the budget was super tight and you have the tools to do this job faster than I did.I will say now that it’s buttoned together again the car is driving a lot better and there’s no play in the front wheels, which is most important.In the photo with the palm of my hand showing, you see me holding the original castle but I expected to see and you see the stupid nylon nut I got, as well as the stud in the new unit with the hex head cutout in the top.In the 2nd photo, the area where my “needs-to-be-trimmed” thumbnail is pointing to the surface I had to grind down slightly to get the part to fit. This one isn’t ground because as I said I only needed 1 of the 2 ball joints and the other Ian a backup part for me now.

Came with a nylon locking nut instead of the castle nut which is not what is pictured. It will work, but i find comfort and security in the castle nut more than the nylon locking nut