tips, tricks, thoughts on replacing uppert a-arms

[NCC1701]

Planning on installing upper a-arms this weekend, anyone have any tips, tricks, or ideas on this. I have been PB BLASTING the bolts every evening since tuesday
Got the a-arms from GBODYPARTS. They are definately good to go :biggrin:
TIA
Lorenzo

 

[fastttype05]

You are going to like the Gbody parts A-arms, they tightned up the whole front end. the best thing to do is if your stock A-ARMs have never been loosed up, get ready to use a good Impact Gun as well as a breaker bar. Be sure to keep track of the camber shims and not how many are in each location. You can also buy boxes of the shims from car quest 1/16 inch ones are like 8 bucks a box and 1/8 inch ones are 16 to 20 a box. Also you will find the dust boots are a PIA they kept pulling out of the metal cup when trying to reassemble the the a-arm to the spindel as the the Gbody parts arms locate the ball joint higher than the stock arms just makes it a little more trickey to get them togther and keep the dust boots on. Be sure the grease the arms BEFORE putting them on the car. Other than that, the hardest part of the entire job was getting the BOLTS on the stock A-arms loose.

Good luck.

 

[ponykiller]

going to do my car soon, are you talking about the 2 bolts that face the engine? also do i need to put a jack under the lower a-arm? :loosen 2 bolts 1st then ball joint or ball then 2 bolts thanks ( could you go just a little more in depth)

 

[Gbodyolds]

going to do my car soon, are you talking about the 2 bolts that face the engine? also do i need to put a jack under the lower a-arm? :loosen 2 bolts 1st then ball joint or ball then 2 bolts thanks ( could you go just a little more in depth)

yes you must put a jack under the lower control arm, dont forget it will cause a potentially dangerous situation if you dont remove the upper balljoint bolt break it loose then work on the 2 bolts that attach the arm to the frame rail, thats all there is to it.

Can someone tell me what the good is about these arms ? Gbodyparts.com has no description for them, are these just tubular replacments with stock geometry ?

 

[ponykiller]

i was told they weight 3 lbs and they have grease fitting where the bushings would be.... grease fitting oh yea

 

[zeus87gn]

Be careful!

I don't know how many people know (or care) about this, but I haven't heard it mentioned before in discussions like this so I though I might add.

The 2 bolts that hold the upper arm 'assembly' to the frame are not supposed to be rotated from the bolt head end. They are a fluted bolt (fluted to the frame) and are supposed to remain in place when the alignment tech does his thing. You have to remove the nuts on the back side first, then tap the bolts out straight.

If you put an impact wrench on the head of the bolt and go to it (after loosening the upper ball joint and raise the arm to get to them), you will strip the flutes and the alignment shop will go insane trying to get the job done.

How do I know this?

 

[Toady]

Thanks for posting this info, zeus87gn. I got everything but the uppers off last weekend and saw some posts on the MonteSS board about the serrations (fluting) on these bolts. What you said makes it more clear. Getting those locknuts undone - and then torqued again - looks to be a fun job...

 

[aminga]

I don't know how many people know (or care) about this, but I haven't heard it mentioned before in discussions like this so I though I might add.

The 2 bolts that hold the upper arm 'assembly' to the frame are not supposed to be rotated from the bolt head end. They are a fluted bolt (fluted to the frame) and are supposed to remain in place when the alignment tech does his thing. You have to remove the nuts on the back side first, then tap the bolts out straight.

If you put an impact wrench on the head of the bolt and go to it (after loosening the upper ball joint and raise the arm to get to them), you will strip the flutes and the alignment shop will go insane trying to get the job done.

How do I know this?

When I did this fortunatly my impact wrench was a piece of Junk and wouldn't even turn the bolts. However when you tap them out and then put them back in the flutes will not hold and when you take them to the allignment shop the heads will just turn and they won't do the allignment (ask me how i know this)

When you put the bolts back in the frame give each head a small tack with a mig to keep the bolts from turning.

 

[zeus87gn]

When you put the bolts back in the frame give each head a small tack with a mig to keep the bolts from turning.

Yep, that's what I had to do.
D@mn GM engineers.
I want struts. Anyone got a TA body they want to sacrafice to the cause? :biggrin: