Old one on the right, believe it or not. They’re more similar than it looks but the tapering collar is very differently positioned.
The brand is Optimal from ECP, the box says Mazda 1990 and newer but the parts look quite different and the castle nut hole is out of alignment by hand alone, torqued it’s way out and the rubber looks excessively compressed.
From memory later NB didn’t have a slotted nut, the split pin just sat above a plain one. Could be they are using a one part fits all concept and supplying an NB part for the NA.
Castle nut and pin is all it came with, even with the nut upside down the hole would be too high. That’s untorqued in the picture.
Can’t compare it with others/swap as everything else is out of stock locally.
You could re-drill the new hole so a split pin will fit in the castellated part and trim off the excess thread.
Alternatively you could put a thick spacer washer under the nut so that the castellated part lines up with the existing drilling.
The important thing is that the taper perfectly matches the hole in the steering arm.
Thanks. Taper was too low, the rubber was almost completely crushed so I replaced the part instead.
Somehow I cross-threaded the Nyloc with a ratchet, and spent an absurd amount of time and effort trying to get another one locally at short notice. Eventually had to overnight some from Amazon at a substantial proportion of the part cost itself.
I specifically wanted a castle nut for exactly this reason, not many to choose from.
Post removed, read ball joint and these are track rod ends.
Most seem to list MK1/MK2 1989 - 2005 but the fit does not look right.
Put simply, the taper has risen too far, over compressing the boot and quite possibly impeding the joint itself. If it was in the right position on the taper, your split pin hole would line up.
MX5Parts genuine Mazda part is listed for all cars 1989 - 2005 too.
It’s definitely an incompatible part, despite what the box says. I was told at ECP that they’ve had an admin bulletin about abnormal levels of parts in the wrong boxes. No further details though and both boxes were the same, in any case I swapped for Starline which was fine.
