control arms
 

did some measuring on 67-70 front lower A arms and on 71 72 lower front arms and it appears that the steering stop welded to the arm comes out about 1/2" further out on 67-70 arms than on the 71 72 arms, that wopuld explain the steering radius problem when swapping to disc brakes and reusing the 67-70 arms, hmmmmm.....

Even worse with 73+ arms
 

With my swap i found i could only turn 1.5 times on my steering wheel each way. Did some nice grinding and now i can do over 2 turns each and out-turn my 00 silverado easily. I think i took off about .6-.7" on the steering stop on the spindles and mine were from a 73 i think. :flag:

I have a set that is mismatched and was wondering which ones to replace with.
Is the stop the only difference or were ther other changes made?
What is the easiest way to identify one from the other?
If you could post some pics of both an early and late models and note the changes that would be helpful.
The only difference I can see is the steering stop but the front end rebuild kits have you specify either up to 70 or 70 and above.

I'm not sure about the difference in our years but i know when you switch from drum to discs you offset your front wheels (they go more outward). Aside from that the years will have different heights. When i swapped my spindles i dropped the front about 2" i believe, it'll rub a little on the inner fender bolts if i go over a big dip fast or something but some smaller tires or different backspacing would cure my ails.

Ohh almost forgot, outer tie rods and ball joints should be replaced with the same year as the spindle you are going to!

arms are exact same otherwise until 73, 73 up wil bolt on but have rubber bushings on 1/2 tons,

So why did they put a steering stop on the later spindles? If I ground it off, are there any negatives? My turning radius sucks since I switched.

no, they all have steering stops, they just are a hair different, if you remove it then you risk turning wheel too far and yanking off yourt brake hose and/or losing control of vehicle around sharp turns like when U turning

I did a bunch of measuring on mine to make sure nothign would rub, I have over 2" from the tire rubbing on anything front to rear maxed out. on my truck the closest thing in the rear is the shock and the closest in the front is the frame rail. do some good measuring first and grind a bit at a time.

your 69 converted to discs ?
the problem with swappin on disc brake spindles is that you lose some of the distance that the spindles can turn when you leave the pre 71 arms on,