Upper Control Arms - Pre Assembly

[jengum]

I'm in the process of assembling the upper control arms and trimmed the rear adjusting sleeves for the extra power steering caster adjustment. All OK.

On to the upper ball joints. I cleaned up the ball joint threads with a wire wheel and they screwed in with little effort and fully seated on both sides. This after reading about the horror stories with MevTech ball joints.

The FFR assembly manual says to point the ball joints outwards so my question is how far is fully out?

The driver and passenger sides are pointing out but not fully out. I made a mark on the ball joint flats indicating fully out before fully seating them into the control arms.

The driver side ball joint is a 1/4 turn past after being fully out and the passenger side is a 1/4 turn before being fully out in their fully seated positions.

So is this close enough for spindle assembly and alignment purposes? I don't think backing off the driver side is a good idea and there's no way I'm going to get another 1/4 turn on the passenger side.

I wanted to check before locking them in with the blue thread locker.

[PNWTim]

I think the comment about pointing out is to ensure you assemble the control arms correctly. The mating surface for the ball joint when it's in it's correct orientation tilts the ball joint so the top is leaning inboard and the shaft is pointing outboard. The entire threaded bossed is tilted to maintain this orientation. Because there is no left and right it's easy to get confused and have them essentially reversed.

[gbranham]

The mounting boss for the ball joints it angled relative to the control arm legs. If you mount them properly, the ball joint will angle outward, toward the tire. That's what you want. You can see it in this picture. And while you're at it, replace those blue ball joint boots with the energy suspension replacements mentioned here on the forum many times. The blue ones are prone to crack. I replaced mine shortly after installing them, because mine cracked before I took the chassis off the dolly. See this thread for info: Front Upper Ball Joint Boots (https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?47852-Front-Upper-Ball-Joint-Boots)

Greg

211000