Era-1 Drop Knuckle Install Issues S14

[speedfiend]

I recently purchased a set of F/R drop knuckles for my S14. I purchased them second hand off a forum member on here. The knuckles were brand new never installed. The gentleman I got them from actually had two sets, one on his s13 utilizing s14 arms, and the second set which he sold to me. When he installed his he said that he had no issues and it was a bolt on affair. Anyways I was in the process of installing them and have run into some major issues.

1st issue being that the bolt holes used to mount the coilovers to the knuckles were two small. I have kei-office coilovers which utilize the stock size bolts. This was an easy fix as I was able to ream the hole out larger in the knuckle to allow the bolts to slide thru.

2nd issue I ran into was the hole on the knuckles where the tie-rods mount was also too small to allow my tie-rods ends to go through. After doing some research and calling around I was able to ream those holes out to 5/8" and utilize a straight allen head bolt with my SPL tie-rod ends. Problem solved there.

3rd issue which I am having a hard time remedying, is that the taper on the hole where the LCA ball joint goes through the knuckle is incorrect. Standard S14 ball joint shanks have a 9 degree taper. From the looks of the knuckles the taper on them looks to be a 10 degree since when my ball joints are inserted, the knuckle does not engage on the taper of the shank. Instead the ball joint is actually able to be pulled all the way into the knuckle to the point that it actually cut through the rubber dust boot on the ball joint. Also, being that the knuckle has a larger taper then the ball joint, it has side to side play in the knuckle.

I have looked into aftermarket ball joints sch as QA1 and AFCO but they don't offer anything that is even remotely able to be installed in stock s14 LCA's. I have spoken to SPL-Parts to see if they had any ideas on a fix but didn't really come up with anything. The only idea we came up with is welding the hole up and re-reaming it to the correct taper. Only issue with this is weld is no fun to drill through and I'm pretty sure it will prolly destroy the reamer on the first hole. And since ball joint reamers are only offered in 7 and 10 degrees, I would have to have the reamer reground to 9 degrees, which is gonna be pricey on top of the $80 for the reamer itself.

Have any of you guys running these knuckles run into any of these issues? I have sent emails to era1 with no reply and can't find a contact number to call them. Anyone have any ideas on how I can remedy this issue or am I just SOL?!?!?!
Thanx, Cameron