5/20/24

4 hrs - Front Suspension

After doing some forum research, I came back to the garage, moved the upper control arms to the vertical mounting holes and went about adjusting the upper control arms to the proper position. I had come across a picture posted by Jeff Kleiner showing upper control arm measurements to get property alignment. It was a bit different than what the manual stated, but I know it adds camber which is desirable for power steering so went about doing that. Unfortunately the rear arm doesn't allow it to be short enough to get the desired camber so I had to cut off about 1/4" of the sleeve to accommodate. Fortunately there is a line on the sleeve about 1/4" from the end that I used as a guide. I used a hacksaw to cut through very slowly and carefully and it worked out great. Used a dremel to smooth the edges and it came out perfectly flat. Quick note: the female threads on the sleeves were extremely dirty. I wound up unscrewing all the sleeves, cleaning them out with a nylon brush, cleaning male threads with nylon brush, and coating with anti-seize prior to reassembly.

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Once I knew everything was in the right place and facing the right direction we torqued the pivot nuts to spec. (Apparently there is no torque spec for the nylon nuts on the outside of the upper sleeve bushings? The manual basically says to tighten until snug, so that's what I did. Just enough to eliminate any gaps and play in the bushings. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

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Moved on to the spindle. Not much in the manual about how to attach, but realized both castle nuts would tighten past where the cotter pins could hold them so researched forums (again) and surmised that the big hardened spacer goes below lower castle nut (tapered side down) and hardened washers are needed to take up any extra space for upper castle nut (not provided by FFR). Had to do some shopping around to find hardened washers as that's not something the big box hardware stores seemed to carry. I've found that working 2-4 hours at a time is perfect because I always end up needing to go buy something to move on to the next step.

Another thing the manual doesn't tell you to do is install the steering arms before the hubs. Fortunately I saw a video showing this or else I wouldn't have known to do it at this point. I was so pleased with myself at remembering this...until realizing two days later that I had put them in backwards. I knew they pointed out, but didn't know they were supposed to point up and out so the taper is oriented correctly. This comes back to bite me later. (Following pic shows steering arm oriented incorrectly.)

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