I have one upper ball joint that needs to be replaced in my 63 Valiant. The rubber cover has a big hole in it. Probably has been there for some time.

I still have the 63 style upper control arms on the car. I have a set of 73 and up upper control arms that I’m planning on using in a disk brake swap in the near future. These have upper ball joints in them.

I was wondering if I could use one of the newer style (used) ball joints in my older control arm. I think I read somewhere that they can be made to work.

I am trying to keep cost down. My front drums were rebuilt about a year ago and I am in the process of collecting the rest of the parts for the disk conversion, so I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on stuff that I’m going to replace anyway.

Thanks,

John

Pretty sure that won't work without major welding/modifications to the A-arm, so I would recommend just getting a new early balljoint - only about $10-20 from your parts store.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

The 73 and later balljoint is larger and will not work in your early assembly.

I have some early upper A-frames with good used bushings and balljoints.
I can sell you one of those cheap so you can swap-on something to hold you over.
DD
<img src="http://www.slantsix.org/parts/list/suspension-brakes-wheels/control-arm-set.jpg"width=400>

How do you tell if a ball joint is bad?

I have not noticed any problems with my handling or alignment.

I was working on the brakes and noticed that the rubber bood has a large split in it.

The car has been sitting since I painted it in November.

Can you just change the dust boot? (If you can't tell, I have never worked on suspension parts before. I'm sure I'll have a bunch of questions.

Thanks,

John

You can just replace the boot, but it's dicey and you can damage the joint getting it out of the spindle hole. If there's no play in the front end, then just grease it a little more often and don't worry, it'll be fine until you swap to discs (next few years?). I ran my '68 Dart with it's factory front end parts until two years ago, and the upper bj boots had been split for at least 10 years and those joints were still decent (180k miles). The upper bj doesn't get much dirt and such on it.

Lou

_________________
Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Well, I guess I’ll just keep an eye on it for now. I’ll keep an eye on them.

Doug, thanks for the offer on the upper control arm. I hadn’t even thought of replacing the entire thing. It didn’t even hit me that that was what you were getting at until this morning.

I’m hoping to get the disks on there by the end of the year. The way my time schedule on the valiant is going that is not very realistic. My plan in January was to have them on by now. Of course I also had planned on having it put back together and on the road again.

John

I think we are all familiar with that time schedule. Has anyone here ever completed a project in the time they originally thought they would without any changes in the plan? I don't believe I ever have!
Rob