Suspension rebuild and disc brake swap...by a noob for noobs
When I installed the upper control arms, I set them for max caster. It turned out later that to get the camber right, a lot of that caster had to be taken out, but here's how I set them to maximize the caster on the passenger side. I wanted the rear cam bolt as far inboard as possible:
and the front cam bolt as far outboard as possible.
The cam bolt adjustments work in combination with the offset bushing orientation. As with the lower control arm pivot shaft and the strut rod nuts, I left these nuts finger tight until the suspension was at ride height. Actually I had to use a wrench to get them "finger tight"--the point is not to torque them down yet.
Next I mounted the new (disc) lower ball joints onto the new disc spindles. I decided not to paint the spindles. Instead I just coated them with WD-40 for some protection. The torque setting for the nuts that hold the ball joint to the spindle is 160 ft-lbs, which I found easier to get after the spindle is on the car. The new ball joint came with the rubber boot not installed. I had a hard time stretching it over the lip, but one of the tubes from the bushing press kit was the perfect size. I think I used a vice to press it down. Read the directions on this one--there's a vent in that boot that needs to face inboard to avoid oozing grease onto the brakes.
Also, when you screw in the zerk fitting you want it accessible from the inboard side.
With the lower ball joint installed, the spindle was ready to attach to the control arms via the upper and lower ball joints. Unfortunately my hammer technique for removing the old spindle from the upper ball joint had scarred the castle nut threads enough that I couldn't get the nut to go back on without spinning the ball joint itself. I thought it would be easy to find a new castle nut at Fastenal but they didn't have one. Napa didn't either unless I wanted to buy a whole new ball joint. I have a thing about not buying stuff I'm not going to use, so I decided to fix the castle nut. This was a Thursday. I took the nut in to my machine shop on Friday but the machinist was off that day. At that point I was at a work stoppage for the weekend, so I took the time to catch up on the honey-do list. Monday the machinist was off again. Not wanting to lose another day, I hunted around for about a half hour until I found the right size tap to clean up the threads. It's not the best organized shop, but it's probably not the worst. It was actually pretty rewarding to fix it myself.
With the castle nut fixed, I was able to mount the spindle on both ball joints, using torque setting of 100 ft-lbs given in the ball joint packaging (the Moog torque settings mostly agreed with the shop manual, maybe 5 ft-lbs more for some components). I read somewhere that when you are lining the castle nut up with the Cotter pin hole, you want to keep tightening rather than back the nut off, so I did that.
You might wonder why the bearings and inner bearing seal are on the spindle. The spindles came that way from hemi71x. He helpfully put all the old components on the spindle in the correct order, and I left them that way until I was ready to install new ones.
With the spindle installed, I could connect the outer tie rod end, which goes up through the ball joint arm. Inner and outer tie rod ends both get 40 ft-lbs.
Also in this picture you can see the setup I used to torque down the bolts attaching the spindle to the ball joint. The crescent wrench was on the nut, with the wood block keeping the crescent wrench from turning. The other wood block kept the whole spindle and control arm assembly from dropping down. I think I used my foot to push the torque wrench. During this project I really came to appreciate the click of the torque wrench: the sound of sweet relief.
Moving right along, I installed the caliper brackets and the dust shield.
[Edit: this post originally mentioned breaking off a bolt. That was actually later; see below.]
Next up: calipers, pads, etc, not to mention master cylinder and proportioning valve.
When I installed the upper control arms, I set them for max caster. It turned out later that to get the camber right, a lot of that caster had to be taken out, but here's how I set them to maximize the caster on the passenger side. I wanted the rear cam bolt as far inboard as possible:
and the front cam bolt as far outboard as possible.
The cam bolt adjustments work in combination with the offset bushing orientation. As with the lower control arm pivot shaft and the strut rod nuts, I left these nuts finger tight until the suspension was at ride height. Actually I had to use a wrench to get them "finger tight"--the point is not to torque them down yet.
Next I mounted the new (disc) lower ball joints onto the new disc spindles. I decided not to paint the spindles. Instead I just coated them with WD-40 for some protection. The torque setting for the nuts that hold the ball joint to the spindle is 160 ft-lbs, which I found easier to get after the spindle is on the car. The new ball joint came with the rubber boot not installed. I had a hard time stretching it over the lip, but one of the tubes from the bushing press kit was the perfect size. I think I used a vice to press it down. Read the directions on this one--there's a vent in that boot that needs to face inboard to avoid oozing grease onto the brakes.
Also, when you screw in the zerk fitting you want it accessible from the inboard side.
With the lower ball joint installed, the spindle was ready to attach to the control arms via the upper and lower ball joints. Unfortunately my hammer technique for removing the old spindle from the upper ball joint had scarred the castle nut threads enough that I couldn't get the nut to go back on without spinning the ball joint itself. I thought it would be easy to find a new castle nut at Fastenal but they didn't have one. Napa didn't either unless I wanted to buy a whole new ball joint. I have a thing about not buying stuff I'm not going to use, so I decided to fix the castle nut. This was a Thursday. I took the nut in to my machine shop on Friday but the machinist was off that day. At that point I was at a work stoppage for the weekend, so I took the time to catch up on the honey-do list. Monday the machinist was off again. Not wanting to lose another day, I hunted around for about a half hour until I found the right size tap to clean up the threads. It's not the best organized shop, but it's probably not the worst. It was actually pretty rewarding to fix it myself.
With the castle nut fixed, I was able to mount the spindle on both ball joints, using torque setting of 100 ft-lbs given in the ball joint packaging (the Moog torque settings mostly agreed with the shop manual, maybe 5 ft-lbs more for some components). I read somewhere that when you are lining the castle nut up with the Cotter pin hole, you want to keep tightening rather than back the nut off, so I did that.
You might wonder why the bearings and inner bearing seal are on the spindle. The spindles came that way from hemi71x. He helpfully put all the old components on the spindle in the correct order, and I left them that way until I was ready to install new ones.
With the spindle installed, I could connect the outer tie rod end, which goes up through the ball joint arm. Inner and outer tie rod ends both get 40 ft-lbs.
Also in this picture you can see the setup I used to torque down the bolts attaching the spindle to the ball joint. The crescent wrench was on the nut, with the wood block keeping the crescent wrench from turning. The other wood block kept the whole spindle and control arm assembly from dropping down. I think I used my foot to push the torque wrench. During this project I really came to appreciate the click of the torque wrench: the sound of sweet relief.
Moving right along, I installed the caliper brackets and the dust shield.
[Edit: this post originally mentioned breaking off a bolt. That was actually later; see below.]
Next up: calipers, pads, etc, not to mention master cylinder and proportioning valve.