Hi Rob,
Would just like to say a big thank you for your help and expertise today.
Just to explain my situation to anyone else reading this -
My car failed it’s MOT today on a few points: split steering rack gaitor, 1 badly worn tyre and 3 tyre’s that are getting close to the limit and lower ball joint excessively worn. The garage phoned me up to tell me the bad news and give me some prices (you might want to sit down cos this is a Mitsy garage!) - steering rack gaitor £63 (think that includes fitting though) and they would not supply just a ball joint, they wanted to sell me the complete lower arm unit for £343 +vat - under normal circumstances i would’ve just paid up, but i told the garage to hold off until i made some enquiries - i phoned Rob and he explained that you can just replace the ball joint, so after a couple of phone calls back to the garage, my bill came down considerably.
Hopefully, if the bits get delivered to me tomorrow, the car will be back on the road by tomorrow night.
So, once again Rob - many thanks 
- i’ll update again when i get my car back.
Gaz