Steering All Over the Place at 55mph+

67Mungo said
@72bluNblu , thanks for putting that all together. Now I feel obligated to give it a whirl your way! I don't have a press and was dreading getting the old bushings out but with that homemade tool I'm for sure more confident, especially since I can just turn the UCA around on the ball joint and not totally remove. I won't be racing, just want a stable ride so sounds like the 3.5 Deg + caster will do the trick. $20 for the tool over $400 UCA's sounds more appealing especially since I'm not a racer and already have the offset bushings and new camber bolts. Now the next step is finding time. Will post when finished whenever that may be.

Yeah I actually prefer using that tool vs a press for the UCA’s. It works great for removing and installing the bushings, and there’s very little chance of damaging the UCA’s. With a press you have to be careful with how you support the UCA, it’s pretty easy to tweak the UCA if you’re not careful. Plus with the tool you can do the bushing swap on the car

BillGrissom said
Not sure you need to loosen the LCA adjusters. I would do one side at a time. Jack up by LCA to keep it close to ride height and remove wheel. If you left the front suspension hanging, the UCA would be tight against their bump stop. Could first support frame rail, then jack LCA up a bit, but not hold all the weight. Main thing is don't fully tighten the UCA bolts unless the car is supported by the wheel at normal ride height. That keeps the rubber bushings at the no-twist state in normal conditions. I did mine with the whole suspension apart, so might be missing something.

For those also changing the upper ball joint, remove it while UCA is installed so it is supported. Don't use a pipe wrench, like the tech did in a FantomWorks episode. There is a special socket for that ball-joint in two sizes - 1963-72 A-body and 1973+ A body and all C-body (B & E same as A?). I have both sockets. If the ball-joint threads got buggered so won't torque down, but is still tight in hole, easiest fix is to tack-weld it at 3 spots. You'll have to grind those off when you change it again in ~250K miles.

I suppose you could leave the suspension loaded for this, but my personal preference is to not have any load on the suspension when I’m pulling anything off of it. Just removes the chance of the suspension unloading/moving when the UCA is removed from the mounts.

With the adjusters unloaded you can put the suspension wherever you want, you can block it up so the UCA isn’t against the upper bump stop.

I also would rather only raise the car once, and keep the stands under the frame rails. Again it just reduces the chance of something moving/shifting with the car in the air.