Arms Back On The Frame

One week left until the self imposed deadline of having the Front suspension rebuilt, back together, and have the wheels on the ground by September 15th. The mad scramble to finish up small things to get it all put back together seems to take forever. The little things you forget about, like hardware, Cleaning up the alignment shims, Brake hardware,  etc are eating up time like crazy. I took the lower control arms to a small machine shop here in town to have the NOS lower control arm bushings pressed in. I dropped them off, and they said they would have them done by noon. So I went back to work bolting the upper ball joints into the upper control arms.  After that, I greased the control arm shafts, the thread in nut bushings, replaced the O’rings with new ones, and installed them on the arms as well.  I went back and picked up the lower arms, and got them prepped to install.  I started with installing the NOS lower control arm shaft pins into the frame.

Then I put the lower control arms in place and carefully finished driving the pins through the frame and into the newly installed bushings on the lower control arms. Once in, I tightened the nut and special washers in the ends. I then installed the upper control arms by bolting them in place, and placing the alignment shims in the exact place and number order they were in before I took them off. I know the car will have to be realigned later, but by placing the same shims in the same place is close enough for having the car roll around in a straight line for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have them all bolted in, and will wait to torque them down until I have the spindles ready to install. The spindles and backing plates are soaking in the cleaning tank until Monday, when I will glass bead blast them.  I then plan to paint them with a couple of coats of Eastwood Chassis Gloss Black.

It’s a mad scramble to the finish, but I think I’ll meet the deadline!

 

 

 

 

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