Upper ball joint covers

Today I spoke to the guys at the test centre about the covers for the upper ball joints and steering rack lock nuts.  They explained it something along the lines of.......

If your car goes to a garage for work to be done, the garage should be able to put the car back to how it was before they started work.  If you have to cut off heatshrink, remove tape etc then it wont go back on when the work is done.  Cable ties are acceptable for securing the covers but if the ties are removed, the covers shouldn't fall off, e.g. splitting some silicone coolant hose and cable tying it on isnt acceptable.

They recommended cable gland shrouds so I went to City Electrical Factors and picked up a pair of 40mm glands and 20mm glands.

I stripped down the front end and removed the top ball joints, taking care to mark the threads so I knew how far to put them back so as not to mess up the geometry.  I cut the 40mm gland shrouds as per the photo below and slid them on the top wishbone before putting the top ball joint back.   The shroud was secured in position with a cable tie.

This now allows the locking nut to be tightened and undone whenever and the shroud wont come off unless the ball joint is removed.

For the steering rack I did the same but with the 20mm shrouds.