Lincolnshire Poacher

Found the same broken ball joint on my 2.2HDI Auto luckily, all the bits were present so I tried a repair using wire and epoxy resin (drilled a hole through the plastic, cut a notch in the cup, lined it all up and wired it all together, used epoxy resin to reinforce and encase the repair on one side away from the moving parts, waited, checked that it worked). The repair lasted about a week before the epoxy resin shattered, the repair made no difference to the vehicle. It's going in for a new timing belt/tensioner tomorrow; I'll see if the garage knows what the rod does.