Anyone Change Their Upper Control Arm Bolts?

[Dodge68charger]

Anyone Change Them To 9/16?
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[bean]

I changed my lower I bolts to 9/16 but not uppers.

[Steeveedee]

Why do you want to go to thicker bolts?

[Rick Bollinger]

I got the heavier 9/16 lower u bolts for mine. Hopefully I will put the driverside on tomorrow.
Steevedee I have heard the stock 1/2" bolts are prone to breaking when turning hard and backing up. No cost difference and I am rebuilding my front end anyway so why not?

[Mbeef61]

I have broken a lower. No fun

[Steeveedee]

Originally Posted by Rick Bollinger

I got the heavier 9/16 lower u bolts for mine. Hopefully I will put the driverside on tomorrow.
Steevedee I have heard the stock 1/2" bolts are prone to breaking when turning hard and backing up. No cost difference and I am rebuilding my front end anyway so why not?

Fair enough. If you mean cranking the steering wheel over hard while backing up, just know that when the steering is cranked that hard (it's called "two-blocking") with power steering, it can blow out the pressure hose. Once I reach the stop, I back off a little. I had a blown out hose on one of my old cars is how I learned of it. Lots of smoke but no fire!

[demian5]

The upper bolts on a 60 im working on, the bolt holes were wallowed out bad. Had to weld them to the frame.

[HO455]

The upper bolts are splined near the head to prevent them from spinning when tightening. So you would have to properly resize the new holes in the frame. There are a limited variety of splined bolts of the correct length so careful selection would be required. The cupped washers would have to be drilled out, as well as the holes in the upper control arm bar would need to be enlarged. There have been numerous people who have installed longer bolts to allow proper alignment of the front end. I have not heard of any reports of the longer bolts failing.
So I believe that changing the upper bolts out for larger bolts would be unnecessary for virtually all applications. The pay back in strength wouldn't be worth the work.
But don't take my word on this as the end all on this subject, do a search in the suspension section of the forum and see if any of the hard core truck racers feel a need to to upgrade the upper bolts.