We are the Oxford Universities Motorsport Foundation http://www.oumf.org, OUMF, who are a group of students from Oxford and Oxford Brookes universities who restore, repair, prepare and compete in as many forms of motorsport as we can! One of our main projects is a Corsa-B endurance rally car which we have been rallying in the Endurance Road Rally Championship with some success!
However, our car has now suffered from two ball joint failures in under a year, thankfully without causing injury and only minor damage to our car. The second time the joint failed was at 30mph, immediately after a four minute, 90mph stretch in thick forest! After some research we quickly found that this is a common fault on Corsas, both on the road and in competition and that the only solution is to replace the ball joints after each event and hope that they last or upgrade to a Uniball system which would make the car safe. We feel that the only sensible and safe solution is to use Uniballs on our car.
Unfortunately the MSA does not allow any changes to the suspension of road rally cars and views Uniballs as a ‘performance upgrade’. Our argument, and the argument of a number of fellow competitors is that the Uniballs do not offer any uprated performance and are necessary for safe competition in Corsas.
Our solution is to get evidence to present to the MSA that the standard Corsa balljoints are a dangerous weak point on the car and the use of a Uniball should be allowed on these cars. If you have suffered from a balljoint failure could you please post details so we can build up a case. Photographs would also be very helpful!
Thank you!
EDIT: Some of the examples that we have found online so far which we will be using in our case.
http://www.corsasport.co.uk/board/viewt ... tid=281550
http://www.allcorsa.co.uk/forums/showth ... 32279d5b1f&
http://passionford.com/forum/general-ca ... -pics.html
http://www.vauxhallownersnetwork.co.uk/ ... lt.121914/
http://www.corsasport.co.uk/board/viewt ... tid=624031
http://www.corsa-c.co.uk/forum/showthre ... y-car-blue.
