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Old 07-14-2017, 11:40 PM   #244
HO455
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Join Date: Feb 2016
Location: Portland Oregon
Posts: 10,756
Re: Working Man's Burbon

The saga continues. I pulled the passenger side lower control arm off this morning planning on having it swapped out by the end of the day. Oh such are the plans of mice and men. The lower ball joint had more than 3/8 of vertical slop in it so the pickle fork method failed. I ended up using a Port-a-Power with a socket to protect the upper ball joint nut pushing the end of the ball joint down and then beating on two pickle forks before the joint popped apart. If the Mapp gas torch hadn't jumped off the work bench last week that would have been part of the solution too. When removing the front U-bolt from the shaft I was concerned that it was not tight. After removing the shaft it was apparent that the shaft had been moving around, as the shaft was not indexed correctly. The shaft's index rivet on the cross member was halfway out of the pilot hole. (See photo 1) The rivet was deformed (see photo 2) and as a result when I put my new shaft in position it was able to slide back and forth a 1/4". I knew how to fix this problem thanks to Chevyrestoguy's "My Caster Mod" thread. I ran to the hardware store and purchased two 1 inch long 1/2" socket head cap screws I had to drill the rivet out as well as the shaft saddle to accommodate the new 1/2" index bolt. I went with the 1/2" size as the head of the fastener matched the 3/4" index hole I machined in the shaft. Photo 3.
As part of the steering rebuild I decided that more caster was a good thing. After trolling lots of threads I decided to machine new index holes in the lower shafts as described in this thread by Chevyrestoguy. There will be more on that later.
http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=501241
I ended up with 3/4" index's instead of the stock 11/16" as only had a 3/4" end mill and a 6/19" drill bit to chose from. (It is hard form me to justify the cost of an odd size end mill for two holes.). The long run it worked out well as the cap screws fit perfectly in the indexes. If someone one else needs to do this they will have to grind the head smaller or try to locate a different style of fastener.
The lower control arm showed damage from hitting something (last photo) which may have been the reason the shaft was out of position. Several people on the forum have talked about changing the shaft U-bolts from the stock 67-72 size to the larger 9/16" 73 and later U-bolts. I had already purchased new ones from Napa and after seeing this I hope they will help prevent this problem in the future. The new bolts do require you to drill the holes in the saddles and cross member larger.
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Thanks to Bob and Jeanie and everyone else at Superior Performance for all their great help.
RIP Bob Parks.
1967 Burban the WMB,1991 S(stink)-10 Blazer,1969 GTO, 1970 Javelin, 1952 F2 Ford 4X4, 29 Model A, 72 Firebird. 85 Alfa Romeo
If it breaks I didn't want it in the first place
The WMB repair thread http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/s...d.php?t=698377
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