small ball joint vs big

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vitamindart

vitamindart

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ok so i am trying to decide what to do for the front suspension on my Valiant.
i have a set of RMS upper arms, strut rods and 73 up disc spindles
for my Duster project ( on the back burner right now )
the Valiant is just going to be a cruiser 273/4 speed nothing crazy.
i know the small joints are not as strong, but for a cruiser that will never see the track or a road course is there anything wrong with using them?
i would really like to keep the budjet down and save the RMS parts for my Duster.
i would probably upgrade to a Wilwood disc set up for the small joing suspension ( want disc's and big bolt pattern)

Thanks,
Dominic
 
Upper or lower? The small upper ball joints are just fine, you just need the larger ones with later spindles. As for the lower ball joints, they're all the same except for 9" drum cars. In that case it was the little bolts that occasionally failed and not the joint. Even then a pretty hard impact into a curb or pothole was needed.
 
uppers, i have a set up from my old dart that is complete small joint upper arms & joints, spindles and lower joints with little to no miles on it.
what it pretty much comes down to is me trying to be Cheap on the Valiant and save my RMS stuff for the Duster.
 
Nope the small ones are fine. Hundreds of thousands of A bodies had them and they worked well.
 
yeppir, if there was a problem with them i would guess they wouldnt have used them on a million cars
 
There is very little force on the upper ball joints. I re-used them on my 65 Dart and 64 Valiant since still tight, though I did remove them to better paint the UCA and added poly boots.

I know of 3 lower ball joints - 9" drum, 10" drum and K-H disks, later disks. I know one can't use the (cheaper) 73+ disk ones on a 65 10" drum spindle, since I tried.

The main wear concern I know of is the bearings in the 9" drum hubs. Both outer bearings spun the race in my 69 Dart, even though I kept them greased and adjusted. I have heard similar stories.
 
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