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Replaced right side suspension today

alrock

El Diablo
Staff member
Messages
10,442
Location
Scottsdale
After TWO recent alignments at Firestone, the bolts for the right upper control arm were not tight. They blamed a disintegrated bushing, which sounded like BS, but a new UCA from Rockauto is less than $100 so I went ahead and replaced it today (with Reloader's assistance, of course). The old UCA barely had a tear in the bushing and the nuts were barely more than finger tight. The previous one was five years old with 25,000 miles and frankly didn't need to be replaced yet.

However, the bump stops/jouncers/whatchamacallits were shot. While they look black, they are the OEM yellow ones. I put in a set of take-off OEMs from Panzer. I prefer the ride of the OEM bump stops to the TD extended ones, even though my torsion bars are cranked up a bit.
i-MPz24Pv-L.jpg


The lower control arm bushings were also shot. Reloader kept picking out pieces of dried, broken rubber out of the rear, in-frame mount before he air-hammered it out of the frame. What you can't see in the pics is that the center sleeves were no longer really in the center anymore. They had been moved to the side a bit and were at an angle too - not much of one, but a bit of an angle. These were about 8 years old and 55,000 miles.
i-JNXDhMT-L.jpg


I went ahead and replaced the UCA cam bolts and nuts as well. I thought I had replaced them already just because they had been torqued so many times, but I had a spare set with all of my other spare parts so I went ahead and put those in.

And because it's Reloader, he had to tap both ball joints and put in zerk fittings. The UCA is a Meevotech from Rockauto and comes with a new pinch bolt.

We almost nailed the alignment and in some ways it is better than it was, I think due to the new lower control arm bushings. The new rubber is softer and the LCA is better aligned.

FYI, "Reloader's assistance" is a technical term meaning he does all of the hard stuff and I loosen a few bolts while dropping tools on the ground.
 
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