Idler arm rebuild

[Simon Body <body@domain.elided>]

Greetings

As part of the front end bushings replacement project on my 91 Spider, I 
took off the idler arm. This was prompted by a clunk from the idler arm at 
extreme left rotation of the steering wheel.

Interestingly, both the upper and lower bushings and the castor arm bushing 
at the upper arm were shot. Anyway, back to the problem.

I bought an idler arm bushing repair kit from IAP, disassembled the idler 
arm, popped out the old plastic/metal bushings and put in the new brass 
bushings. I did not use the new spindle in the kit as the old one looked OK 
and it requires grinding off the old weld on the idler arm and rewelding 
the new one. Then I tried to reassemble the idler. It went in OK but got 
progressively much tighter with insertion. Tried the BMFH for a few taps 
but it was obvious that things were not well, so disassembled the whole 
thing again. Now I've got the whole thing sitting on the bench in pieces.

Questions:
1. Is the IAP kit from Vema Ricambi a dud?
2. Should I have used the spindle from the kit?
3. Anyone with prior experience of other kits, especially with plastic 
bushings?

Many thanks.
Simon Body
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