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Old 11-29-2018, 02:10 PM   #3
LH Lead-Foot
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Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Omaha, NE.
Posts: 214
Re: Rear trailing arms

For fabricating your rear lower control arms, the best material is DOM tubing. If your have some good welding skills, you will have to bend the correct mount angel plus a slight skew at the forward mount points. The frame member is straight along with the brackets but I believe the eyelets are at a slight angle to the crossmember.

Why are you replacing these? Wheel hop, something extra cool or what?

I installed extreme energy poly inserts that comes with a new inner tube. While the factory lower arms can be replaced with many vendors product, I look at the obvious. First, these are two steel box channel mild steel, placed back to back and plug welded every 8" or so. On the top and bottom, there is no fastening, so to stiffing the factory stuff, I sandblasted, then MIG welded the entire length of the arms from top, around the ends, then the bottom. After a little smoothing with a grinder & 120 flap disc, they painted up nice, and re-installed.

They work great with 5.3L Vortec, 4L60 & 3:08 mounted on a series 3 Eaton disc-type posi with P245/75R16 tires. Yes, all are 6 bolt with 5.5" pattern. This makes an overdrive of 0.70:1 and 31" O.D. tires and I get 19-21 MPG on the highway. I am running about 1460 RPM at 65 MPH if I remember correctly.
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