Lovemyev
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2021
- Messages
- 8,127
- Reaction score
- 8,912
- Points
- 2,669
- Location
- N.Wales ZS EV ( Gen 2 ).
It could well be an installation issue of course, but exerting enough force on that UJ joint in the production proceed, that could have accelerated the failure rate, should be a very easy spot on the assembly line.My theory is that its an installation issue, which might explain why it seems absolutely fine in most cars but catastrophic failure in others. If the column is under compression (or equally under tension), it could well lead to such failure.
If it was a design flaw, eg working angles not within spec, I would have expected more failures.
Of course, it could be that there are more failures than we realise!
We can speculate until the cow’s come home here to be honest !.
It has been an issue since the Gen1 was released in 2019 on SOME cars.
So if they intended to do anything radical about it, they would have done it by now.
Instead of treating it on a “customer by customer”complaint basis.
Manufactures very rarely have a single point of supply for components, they have at least two many be three different suppliers for the same component.
This maybe where the answer lies.
Supplier “A” has an issue with either the quality of the materials used to assemble this UJ.
Or the standard of the tooling / training of the labour assembling it.
Supplier “B” however, gets a better quality UJ’s joint from a different supplier, or the labour is better trained at installing the UJ’s into the steering coupling etc.
Lucky owners gets a lower steering coupling on his car from supplier B.
While unlucky owner, gets the inferior coupling from supplier “A” fitted to his/her car.