Thrust arm hassles

[Sidney Rough-Diamond]

Here's the background : I bought all new arms and drops links etc off German ebay at the start of the year to replace the worn stuff of unknown age because I wanted to track the car at the Nurburgring. Had all this installed and it was fine until after a second 'Ring trip the thurst arm bushes were shot. Finally got around to installing some RTRS bushes yesterday, but not without some hassle. First I had to do all the work at my place of work. I packed every damn tool I could find in the garage as a 'just in case' , but clean forgot to take a ball joint splitter despite telling myself to dig this out and chuck it in the car several nights before.
So now i'm at work and getting everything I need to do the job laid out on the floor and notice the lack of a splitter. Rather than drive all the way home to try and find mine, I think no big deal, screw the nut on and a good whack with a hammer with split the joint. Well,it never quite works like that,does it ?It took a lot of blows from a lump hammer to do this and of course damaged the nut slightly. I knew there was a decent selection of new nuts at work I could grab so no problem, except none where anywhere close to fitting. The old nuts were a little damaged looking but the thread was perfect and fitted no problem. So now I need a new pair - does anyone know the correct size and thread pitch, I'm guessing they are all the same even though they are not BMW parts ?

Now the second hassle. When I had the arms removed, you could see the rubber boot was badly perished and was going to split very soon - not good when they are only approx 6 months old. Needing the car back on the road, I had to install the new bushes and refit the arms with the damaged nuts. So can you buy replacement rubber ball joint boots ? The joint is still perfect and I don't really want to have to press the new bushes out again and pay for another set of arms just because of the rubber boot.

Cheers

[bones]

spray the old boots with rubberized undercoating,spray any new under carriage rubber with the same product.torque all rubber bushings at ride height. bones