Can someone point me in the direction of a good front end rebuild kit for a 71 Duster with drum's and manual everything? I found this one on ebay but I'm not sure of the quality or the price comparisons. Thanks.

http://tinyurl.com/5ofaft

www.espo.com , same components as shown in the eBay ad.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Thanks Dan. I called them up and they wanted $300 for the kit which is way more than what the website lists them for. I'll probably just end up getting one off of ebay if thats the case.

Maybe I should have gotten the kit from that site? I just put the kit in today and it only came with two tie rod ends? One inner and one outer? Seems kind of silly to me. They should have 4. Now I have to order a couple from Napa.

Edit - So I put the kit in and limped it down to Les Schwab to get aligned. It was pretty bad so I assumed they would want to charge me more than the normal $50 price or so, which I was ok with. Well after looking at it, the guy tells me the tie rod ends are adjusted wrong, where one side is almost all the way in and the other side is too far out. He said it was gonna cost me an extra $80, which is $20 per tie rod end for installation to fix it. He said they didn't really have time to do it but they were "hooking me up" because they were gonna align the steering wheel too. I told him all they had to do was loosen the bolts on the tie rods and turn them on the car to adjust them. I said it would take no more than 15 min and I'd give an extra $20 for that service. He told me that I must be joking and that the only way to adjust them was to remove the tie rods from the car and then adjust. I told him that was BS and he said he wasn't gonna argue with me anymore. So I took my car back and he crumbled up his paper out of anger Ended up getting it done somewhere else and it looks perfect now. The steering is much stiffer, the car doesn't lay way over to the side when I make sharp turns and it actually goes in a straight line now.

did you have any trouble installing the kit?

Yeah it's a major pain. I found the best way to remove the upper ball joints is to take the upper control arm off. Flip it over and put the top of the ball joint in a vice. Then put a metal rod through the control arm holes and turn the entire control arm around and around until it comes free from the ball joint. Doing it on the car with a pipe wrench (or the real tool if you have one) can be a pain. The tie rod ends are simple to install and the bushings on the control arms have to be pressed in. I'd advise that you look up the post where the guy makes a home made press from items at home depot. Works just fine, he even took pictures. Putting the two bolts on that hold up the upper control arm were a serious pain on one side. They would just not go through no matter what I did. Took me an hour to get those two bolts in. On the other side it took me five minutes. Other than that I just eye balled the camber and toe in/out to get it to the shop for an alignment.

It took me about 7 hours to do the first side and 2 hours to do the other side once I figured out how to do everything. I was also pretty sore the next day.

I left my UCA's installed in my duster and using the correct socket and a breaker bar, I had them loose and unthreaded in 3 minutes....
You really have to watch and clean out the track before installation... once you remove the whole shebang, it's good to look at all the attaching areas, the welds on the UCA fender brackets have been known to rust, crack and let go at a very bad time...

FYI,

-D.Idiot

Home made press:
Thu May 22, 08

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"A" Body department:

I removed the Dart's UCA today to replace the bushings. Using a home made press consisting of a 2" pipe couplings, a 2x3/4" pipe bushing, a length of 3/8" threaded rod and a few nuts & washers, it quickly popped the bushings out & installed the new ones with no effort. All for under ten bucks.

http://s294.photobucket.com/albums/mm87 ... 0_0669.jpg

http://s294.photobucket.com/albums/mm87 ... 0_0670.jpg

http://s294.photobucket.com/albums/mm87 ... 0_0667.jpg

http://s294.photobucket.com/albums/mm87 ... 0_0668.jpg



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67' Dart GT Convertible
82' LeBaron
07' 300 C AWD

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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

Oops I meant doing it with a pipe wrench is a pain. The real socket is just as simple as taking a tough bolt off.

Since we're on the subject, what special tools (other than the special ball joint socket) should I buy before I start on rebuilding my '71 Satellite's front suspension? I have a 12 ton press, but no special spacers or adapters. Are the Harbor Freight kits #38335 and #46389 worth useful for this?

(I have the SnapOn socket, but it still took every bit of my strength and a long lever to get the ball joint out of my '75 Coronet.)

I haven't done pressed in ball-joints yet, but for other things I've always gotten away with using my 3/4" sockets (and sometimes 1/2" for smaller things) if I needed adaptors for pressing things in or out........

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

A big ass hammer is good to. I use a 13lb mallet with a 10" handle...good for tight spaces and has some power when you have to swing it.

I've done three Dart front ends and have always used the special socket for the upper. I also needed to soak 'em in Kroil and even then needed a long cheater bar over the breaker bar to get them out.

Had access to a 20 ton press for one of the jobs. Definitely prefer it over banging away with a hammer. Don't know anything about the adapters. I used a socket that would fit over the bushing on the bottom and one that was slightly smaller than the shell of the bushing up on top. If things get off line, stop! Otherwise you may have a socket shooting out at you with some force behind it.

I recently rebuilt a new front k-frame for my Dart, aside from the ball joint socket, I found the Harbor Freight press kit # 38335-9VGA, to be all I needed.
Removing the lca bushing shell was pretty challenging though, ended up welding a thick washer over it pushing it out with a length of threaded rod.

Here's a good article on the LCA's:
http://www.moparmusclemagazine.com/tips ... index.html

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225 .030
.020 off the block .100 from head
Comp 264
904 Tranny
New Ebre-ting

http://s78.photobucket.com/albums/j103/edrod01/