79MakoL82

OK. I rebuilt the rear end last year, and I just ordered all the parts to begin the front end re-build.

Are there any front end re-build papers out there with tips and tricks? I do have the Shop Manual for my 79, but I'm just wondering if there's anything out there written for the laymen with good tips.

Also, if you just have a good tip that you picked up, let me know!!!!

Thanks. :D :cheers:

I'm psyched to get this baby done and back on the road now that the weather is turning cooler. :cool:

lars

79 -
I have a complete step-by-step paper on how to do it. If you don't find it posted in the Tech section, drop me an e-mail request and I'll send you the paper as an MS Word doc.
V8FastCars@msn.com

79MakoL82

Lars,

Somehow I knew you'd have one.

I didn't see it over in the C3 tech section, however, I did print out your valve lash paper while there.

I'm sending you an e-mail.

Thanks

:cheers:

l2vette

Lars:
you've got mail, I need all the help I can get!!

C3 Shark Tank

Rob,

So does this mean we might see you at some shows before we all retire? :jester Are you going to Ribfest?

The best thing I got for suspension rebuilding is the Video from Van Steel, $20 well spent! :thumbs:

Richard Cooper

79Makol82,
Do yourself a very big favor and get the papers from Lars. I used his method this past summer and rebuilt the whole front end of my 81. It came out great and was very easy to do. He gives you step by step and its explained very well. :thumbs: :thumbs:

79MakoL82

Hey Scott.

Yeah. Just got back from picking up the parts this morning. What a great day!!! I have them all set out in the back room and it feels like Christmas.

If you recall, the shop wouldn't do the alignment on the rear end because the front was too sloppy. The car "seems" to run and drive OK, but I didn't want to screw up my tires or anything else so I've just been starting it and driving around real close to home about once a week. I'm hoping to get this done somewhat quickly so I can get a full alignment and start cruising now that the weather's turning a little cooler. It'll be good to get out to some events again. It's been over a year!!!! :rolleyes:

Unfortunately, not going to make it to Ribfest. Too many projects and not enough time. But once they're done, I'll definately be getting out to some events.

H-m-m-m-m-m-m The $20 video from Van Steel sounds like a good idea.

Lars, I sent you an e-mail. Let me know if you didn't get it or had trouble responding. I have new anti-spam software that I'm still tweeking and I hope it didn't get rejected.

Thanks guys. :cheers:


[Modified by 79MakoL82, 10:14 AM 10/25/2003]

lars

79 -
I'm in Utah right now - I'll be driving back home to Denver Sunday morning and will send you out the paper as soon as I'm back. It might be in the C1/C2 tech section, but I can't remember if I actually submitted it for posting at all...

lars

79 -
Okay... here goes. I typed up a few words about the process real quick:
In the disassembly and rebuild of this front end, here are the steps and sequences we used for an easy job:

Tools needed:

Beer
Jack Daniels
Floor jack
Jack Stands
Air Compressor
½” Drive Impact
Air Hammer (Air Chisel) with radiused chisel tip, straight chisel tip and pickle fork attachment
Pickle Fork
Spring Compressor (not required for small block cars)
Big Hammer
Complete socket sets in 3/8” and ½” drive
½” and 3/8” drive ratchets with extensions
A Cheap Taiwanese ¾” drive socket set
Complete combination wrench set from 5/16” thru 15/16”
Screwdrivers
Pliers
Pin punch set
Torque Wrench
Heavy Duty Vice mounted to a solid workbench
3/8-drive air ratchet with a set of deep sockets is a big benefit
Masking Tape
Felt Marker
Box Knife
220-grit sandpaper or emery cloth
Assembly Lube
Band-Aids

Raise the front of the car off the floor and secure it with jack stands under the frame, allowing the front suspension to be un-supported. Make sure your floor jack has enough height travel to reach the bottom surface of the lower a-arms with the car in this raised position. Also, make sure the car is high enough to allow the lower a-arms to swing all the way down to the near-vertical position. Remove the front wheels.

Disconnect the flexible brake lines from the wheel cylinders or at the frame brackets. Cap the line with a bolt or plastic cap to prevent brake fluid from dripping from the line.

Remove the front shocks.

Remove the front stabilizer bar and all the bar attach hardware.

Remove the cotter pins on the nuts securing the upper ball joints, lower ball joints, and outer tie rod ends. These are often rusted in place, and can be a challenge to remove. Use the Band-Aids as required.

Loosen the ball joint nuts and the tie rod end nuts so that the nuts are backed off to produce about 1/8” clearance from the bottom surface of the nut to the seating surface, but do not remove the nuts completely.

Using the air hammer with a pickle fork insert, pop the tie rod ends loose. Once they pop loose and slam against the loosened nuts (the loose nuts will retain the parts so they don’t go flying through the air when they pop loose), remove the nuts, remove the tie rod ends from the spindle, and tie the tie rod end assembly up out of the way with some string or wire.

Insert the air hammer pickle fork into the upper ball joints and pound away until spring pressure pops the ball joint away from the spindle and up against the loosened nut. Do this on both sides.

If you’re working on a small block car with stock springs, you do not need to use a spring compressor. You can do this in the sequence we did as follows. Big block cars can also be disassembled in this fashion if care is taken when popping out the springs, but a spring compressor is safer on the BB:

Bring your floor jack up underneath the spring pocket of the lower a-arm and raise the jack and the arm until you see the upper ball joint nut slacken off the spindle. Remove the upper ball joint nut. Slowly, lower the floor jack. The lower arm with the spindle/brakes will drop down and disengage from the upper ball joint, and the spring will go completely slack. Once the arm has dropped all the way down, simply remove the loose spring – there will be no tension on it, and it will pretty much fall out on its own. On big block cars, you may need to install your spring compressor and squeeze the spring before dropping the arm as described.

Once the spring is removed, bring the lower arm and spindle back up and engage the upper ball joint stud to the spindle. Loosely attach the upper ball joint nut to join the assembly. Let it all hang like this, and take the air chisel to the lower ball joint, which is now not loaded by the spring. The air chisel will usually knock the lower ball joint stud out of the spindle once the spring has been removed. If it doesn’t, use your pickle fork and big freaking hammer (BFH) until the joint pops loose. Once loose, remove the upper and lower ball joint nuts, and remove the entire spindle/brake assembly from the car. Repeat the whole process for the other side.

Remove the bolts (3) holding the lower a-arm to the frame. A ½” drive impact gun is good for this job. Remove the lower a-arms.

From the top side of the engine compartment, loosen the 2 nuts holding each of the upper a-arms to the frame. As you loosen these nuts, pull the entire alignment shim pack off each location, tape each pack together, and label them as “left front, left rear, right front, and right rear.” Once the shims have been removed, taped, and labeled, remove the nuts.

The driver’s side upper a-arm can easily be removed by wiggling it off the studs and pulling it out. The passenger side does not have adequate space to slip it off the studs, so the pressed studs must be removed. This can be done in several ways: Many of these studs are pressed loosely enough that you can wiggle the a-arm back and forth to make the studs wiggle. By having a helper pry against the studs while they’re wiggled, they will pop out. You can also use a C-Clamp against the protruding threaded end of the stud while placing a large socket over the head of the stud. You have to have just the right sized C-clamp to do this. You can then press the stud out into the socket covering the head. Finally, if the studs do not want to come out, you can put a socket onto the stud head and give it a few zaps back and forth with your ½” drive impact. This will loosen the knurled shank of the stud in the frame, and the stud can be wiggled out. If you do this, be careful about how much you hit the stud with the impact gun – you just have to BARELY give it a few whacks in each direction to get it loose. If you really pound in it you will completely turn the stud in the frame hole, and you will round off and destroy all the knurling. You will then need to buy new studs (available from any auto parts store). With the studs removed, the a-arm will come out from the wheel-well side of the car once you figure out just how to twist it to get it out of the wheel well opening (it really does come out).

Mark the upper a-arms with something to show which one is left and which one is right – the arms are similar, but different, and it can be confusing which is which once they’re mixed up. The lower arms are obvious, since they have the stabilizer bar attach point on the leading edge.

This completes disassembly of the front suspension. If you are replacing tie rod ends and idler arm, this is the time to finish unbolting these components and using the air hammer as earlier described.

If your car has original ball joints, the upper joints are attached with rivets. These rivets are pretty soft, so simply clamp the a-arm in your vice and use a flat chisel insert in your air hammer to cut the heads off the rivets. Once the heads are cut off, you can use a pin punch and a hammer to knock the rivets out of the arms.

If your car has aftermarket ball joints, they will all be attached with nuts and bolts. Remove all the hardware and remove all the ball joints.

Now for the a-arm bushings. No press is necessary – just your handy air hammer and a ¾” drive socket set. Remove the shaft bolts and washers from the a-arm assemblies. The uppers are smaller than the lowers, so you can’t mix them up.

Clamp one of the arms firmly in your vice so you have access to one of the bushings. Notice that on the inside of the bushing (the end away from where the bolt and big washer retains the bushing to the shaft) the rubber will be bulging and squeezing out. Using a box knife, cut the rubber away from the bushing in this area. This will expose a small portion of the inner bushing sleeve where it slides over the shaft. The toughest part of getting the bushings off is due to these inner sleeves being seized and rusted to the shaft. Using your air chisel, place the chisel tip onto the inner bushing sleeve at an angle at this location and give it a few zaps. Hitting directly on this inner sleeve in this way will make the inner sleeve start to move off the shaft. Once it starts moving, use your radiused chisel tip at the other end of the bushing, forcing the chisel in between the outer large lip of the bushing and the a-arm. By walking the chisel around this outer lip and beating it away from the a-arm, the bushing will “walk” right out of the a-arm and off the shaft. You may have to alternate beatings between the inner bushing on the inside, and the outer lip on the outside.

Repeat this with all the bushings. Once you get this technique down, you can easily pop all 8 of the bushings out of the arms within 15 minutes.

With the bushings out of the arms, use a little sandpaper or emery cloth to smooth out, de-rust, and de-burr the bushing bores. Use a file if needed to remove any bigger burrs. Clean up the arms and paint them.

Sand and de-burr the a-arm shafts as well. Remove any rust and nicks on the shaft ends where the bushing will be installed. Clean them up and paint them.

You can now install your new ball joints. If the lube fittings are 90-degree fittings, install these so that the fittings point backwards. This will prevent road dirt from getting into them. Torque the ball joint attach hardware to the spec provided by the manufacturer.

The upper a-arm shafts should be able to slip all the way through the bare upper a-arm bushing holes. Verify this before proceeding. Coat the upper a-arm bushing holes with assembly lube. Lube the a-arm shafts where the bushing sleeves will be installed. If you have polyurethane bushings, remove the bushing inner sleeves and lubricate them with the lube provided by the manufacturer. Using a ¾” drive socket that is bigger than the bushing, clamp the socket in your vice, and place the a-arm over the socket. Insert the new bushing into the arm, and simply tap it into the arm by using a ¾” drive socket of the right size on the large diameter bushing flange. The bushing will tap right into the arm without distorting the arm as long as you keep it going straight.

Insert the a-arm shaft through the remaining empty hole and engage the shaft into the new bushing. Install the second bushing into the opposite end of the a-arm so it engages the shaft. Place the a-arm in your vice so that the vice provides backing for the arm, and tap the second bushing into position using a socket on the outer lip of the bushing.

This same process is used for all of the bushings – the bushings can be hammered into place using a ¾” drive socket and a 5-pound hammer. Note that on the lower a-arms you need to install the shaft along with the first bushing since the shaft will not go into the arm once one of the bushings has been installed.

Install the shaft end bolts and washers loosely – do not tighten.

Install the upper a-arms into the car. If you removed the arm attach studs, install the studs and seat them by tapping them into the frame with a hammer and a rod. Install the shim packs back into their original locations, install the nuts, and tighten it all up.

Install the lower a-arms using the hardware removed earlier.

Notice that the lower a-arms have a hole drilled in the lower spring pocket. This hole serves as a water drain hole. It also serves as an alignment hole for the spring. You want to install the springs so that the end coil of the spring comes right up against this hole, but does not cover the hole. With this in mind, install the spring and make sure it is correctly situated in the upper spring pocket. Use a flashlight so look at the pocket configuration, and make sure the spring is going in right. Stuff the spring up there, and use your floor jack to raise the lower a-arm up underneath the spring. If you’re working on a big block, you will need to have a spring compressor on the spring. Small block cars can be assembled by hand. Simply raise the lower arm under the spring and use the weight of the car to compress the spring. Verify spring rotation to the drain hole. With the floor jack supporting the arm and compressing the spring, slip the spindle/brake assembly onto the lower ball joint stud and install the nut. Swing the spindle into position and engage the upper ball joint to the spindle. Install the nut. Lower the floor jack and remove it. Tighten and torque the ball joint nuts and install the cotter keys. Swing the tie rod end into position and engage it with the spindle. Torque and install the cotter key. Attach the brake hose.

Repeat this for the other side.

Slip the shocks back in and bolt them up. Install the stabilizer bar. Bleed the brakes. Lube the new ball joints, and drop the car down on thr ground. With the full weight of the car on the suspension, tighten the loose a-arm bolts and get the car over to the alignment shop.

Piece of cake. We had a group of people working on SteveÂ’s Â’64, but we also rebuilt all 4 of the drum brakes, rebuilt the master cylinder, cleaned and painted all the parts, ad did a bunch of screwing around. It took us 6 hours to do everything, most of which was consumed by little tinkering jobs. The major teardown ad re-assembly goes very quickly and is simple work.

Hope everyone has a great time rebuilding their front ends! Don’t forget to consume lots of beer.

Chevyguy

Thanks Lars! :thumbs: :cheers:

79MakoL82

Thanks Lars

That's probably the one part of the process I WON'T forget.

I'm actually going to be starting the project next weekend, so if you could e-mail me the original paper when you get back, I'd be greatly appreciative.

Thanks again.

:cheers:

lars

I'll get clean copies of the paper out to everyone who has sent me an e-mail request as soon as I get back home.

79MakoL82

Lars,

How important is the air compressor and air hammer. I just checked my tool box and damn if sombody didn't walk off with mine. Can I just do this with a pickel fork and a regular hammer?

Please advise.

Thanks.

lars

79 -
You can use the pickle fork and a hammer for the overall disassembly, but you do need the compressor and air hammer if you intent to do the a-arm bushings. No point in doing the front end rebuild without replacing the a-arm bushings...

Somebody walked off with the compressor you had stashed in your toolbox...?? Damn!

79MakoL82

I'm sure you realize I was being sarcastic about the tool box. I always eye an air compressor and related tools at Sears, etc., but just can't justify buying one at this point.

Maybe I can work something out with Van Steel down the street to install the bushings. One of the good things about living in this area is having Van Steel and VB & P within 15 minutes of the house. :D

C3 Shark Tank

Rob- too bad you can't make it. It looks like I won't make the January show though, that stinks because I'll miss Larry's BBQ and that makes me really :mad

If you need air tools come on down with your parts, you're welcome to use mine.

79MakoL82

I may take you up on that Scott

Thanks!!

Spook

Lars,

Great write up for us all. I just gotta remember to save a beer or two for you whenever you make it around.

Whats the JD for? those stubborn instances!
I usually just rely on my horrible temper to take care of it. hehe.

Once again I am lucky enough to catch another awesome post. Thanks!

Spook
:reddevil

djcwardog

I've done two cars. The first one I drove out and pressed in the bushings. Great learing experience but such a pain. Luckily I had the Camp Pendleton Auto Hobby Shop with their air tools and hydraulic press.

For the second car - what I have now - I used the Van Steel upper and lower A-Arms with rubber bushings already pressed in and new ball joints riveted on. Made the job so much easier to just replace the A-Arms. I am working out of my garage and did not then have access to an air compressor (but I do now!). After I shopped around for machine shop service just to press out old and press in new bushings, it was cheaper to do it the Van Steel way. Plus the A-Arms have a beautiful gloss black finish - baked on and thick...

If not too late - go Van Steel!


[Modified by djcwardog, 6:15 PM 10/26/2003]

79MakoL82

I love Van Steel's work BUT.....

After spending over $1,800 there last year on getting my rear end work done, and as I already have the parts, $140 per A-arm ($560 for all four? :eek:) is a little too steep for me. I need to do this on a budget. What I'm looking for is to just get the old bushing out and the new ones in for as little green as possible. I don't have a lot of cash to spend. I'll do the rest of the work myself.