What is the major benefit to adjustable upper control arms? I have been looking and wounder if I could benefit from them.

My car is a 64 Valiant 2dr, it has 1" torsion bars, stock 64 lower control arms with stiffeners and stock 64 uppers. Stock strut rods and addco front sway bar. I have 73"+ spindles with machined hubs sporting 12.5" rotors and twin piston calipers. Using Diff Doctor spindle adapters.

The previous owner had a few bushings replaced and the upper ball joints with about 10k miles on them. 2 years ago when I started on my front end mods and got carried away with a trans swap and rear axle swap I never got the front end finished. I got the front end bolted together this week and found my new lower ball joint, boots burst and strut rod bushings are shot. Also looks like the rubber bushings are in worse shape then previously thought.

The car is now going in to Daily Driver Status soon, its sporting 245-45-17 rubber and lowered 2", with a 5 speed and 3.73 rear gears. It will be driven spiritedly! So it needs new ball joints and bushings. I looked at the various kits that have ball joints and bushings and upper control arms but not sure what is the best route. I do know I would like to upgrade the steering as well.

My though after looking is piecing things together that could better suit my needs or buy a complete kit. I am no stranger to fabrication and would even entertain building my own control arms, all ready priced out my cost and they would be priced compairable to buying adjustable arms from the major companies. My question is what would be the best way to get a good strong setup able to handle anything I could throw at it of course on budget not more than $600 if possible.

The stock arms are very good, but can often be somewhat difficult when replacing bushings and balljoints and this can affect durability. The balljoint opening gets wallowed out and you have to tack weld the new one in or it might slip. Same with bushing holes. The MOOG offset bushings work well to give you about any reasonable alignment specs, assuming your car has not been in a wreck and has non-bent suspension parts.

For $300-350, you can call Bill Reilly (RMS) or Firm Feel on the phone and order nicely made UCAs with new bjs and bushings. RMS and Firmfeel are the best and please don't bother with anyone else. The adjustable part is not necessary since they build in a little more caster anyway and the stock adjustment can do the rest, although most of the ones they offer are adjustable. I have found no problems running these on the street, although I will say I only have about 12k miles on the 64 Dart UCAs and the others are on the racecar. I think my new 64 Valiant has the Firmfeel ones - about 8k miles so far and all is well. I have stockers on the 68 Dart and those work great too.

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

If you can get enough caster from stock UCA, and ball joint can be screwed in tightly, and bushings fit tightly, I would stick with stock arms.


If however as Dart 270 said, there is a problem attaining enough caster angle, look to after market fixes starting with corrector bushings, and than tubular UCA.


I have a set of c. 2008 CAP Inc. tubular UCAs that are junk, poor ungusseted design, and no dust boot sealing capability requiring greasing of joint every 800 or so miles; one PIA. At the time there was not the robust selection of these parts available for A Bodies that could add enough degrees of caster to bring my old heap into alignment.


I'm not acquainted with Firm Feel's arms, but looking at photo on their site they look to be properly gusseted or rather mechanically strong enough for daily driving. The unknown of it is how well dose the dust boot seal the ball joint for daily driving. Perhaps Lou could expand on sealing capability. I would like to know as well as UCA replacement is high on my list these days.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

I cannot speak for the Bill Reilly (RMS) upper control arms, but having held both the Firm Feel and QA1, the QA1 seemed alot stouter(beefier welds and higher quality control). I still haven't put them on my car to report back.(waiting to purchase new wheels and tires)
With the Firm Feel upper arms you have to use their "square" stop bumpers also.

http://www.qa1.net/suspension/street-pe ... ntrol-arms

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1964 Dart GT

The upper control arms are pretty stout and will hold up to a lot. If you can't get enough + caster, IMO the first step is to use the Moog offset UCA bushings and then go to any aftermarket UCA's. Having said all that, if you plan to do a moderate amount of suspension adjustments to fine tune in the handling, then the adjustable UCA's migth be handy.