[69gmcc10]

What a winter we are having her in western Montana! It has been cold, it has snowed allot compared to previous years, it has rained, it has snowed more. Because my 69 GMC project "George" is comfortably placed in the garage waiting for me to finish the LM7 swap, I have no place out of the elements to do any maintenance on the daily driver. But, the heavens opened up and I got a chance to replace the upper ball joints the other weekend on a balmy and sunny 40 degree day!

With all of the ice ruts in the roads and the frost heaves that have quickly turned to what feels like potholes holding hands I couldn't take the clunking of the upper ball joints any more. After 170 some thousand miles on the original ball joints it was just time for a change. It was still too cold to paint the arms while I had them out, but I did replace the bushings with prothane replacements while I was doing it because, well you know...While I was at it...

I replaced the joints with some excellent Moog parts and in order to remove the rubber bushings I used the ball joint C-clamp press and a bolt through a large washer to push them right out, as pictured below. It was a real smooth way of getting the bushings out in one piece, again pictured below, without needing to "burn them out" like Prothane recommends. That just sounds messy and sticky and I am still taken aback just a little every time I think about a company that advises you to take a torch to a vehicles suspension parts to get rid of them so there stuff can go in place of it. The only thing I can think of that I want the insides burnt out of is a whisky barrel.

when I was done the front end tightened right up, there was a noticeable lack of clunks coming from the suspension, and the steering wheel is defiantly communicating with me better about what is going on at the contact patch. I am still struggling to find an alignment shop that will do what I ask when it comes to aligning the truck as oppose to harass me about the torsion keys being turned up, but I continue to search for that magical shop. I am not asking any shop to align it outside acceptable factory ranges when they align it, but none of them want to give me the negative .25 deg camber that is within acceptable tolerances per GM spec. They all want to try and give me .5 degrees of positive camber and completely eliminate any steering confidence. My only saving grace is with the tightened keys you cant get anywhere near that positive in the adjustments, but they try despite any conversation I have with them before hand. I might start looking into purchasing an alignment kit for myself and be done with the shops.

I plan on replacing the lower ball joints and adding polly bushing to the lower arms later this spring. I might also get a new Idler arm and support at that time.