Rec: Where to buy control arms

[68chevystepside]

I replacing my front end suspension and brakes on my 68 stepside with parts from ece. During the removal of my old suspension i found out my upper and lower control arms were not reusable because the were so old and would not separate from the drum spindles. Since ece does not sell them so i found some from no limit engineering and from truckandcarshop.com. My question is have any of you purchased control arms from either one of these companies or do any of you have another place you recommend? thanks.

[PGSigns]

Are they rusted out? If not getting the ball joints out of the spindle is not a big deal. If they are still solid I would rebuild them. Also there are a bunch of us who are running the 73 to 87 control arms with the better bushings.
Jimmy

[Clyde65]

The control arms you speak of are custom and are not cheap. If you want a corner slicer truck, then those might be what you need.
If you want just daily driver, then as PGSigns said, go with a 73-87 1/2 ton upper and lower. those can be had at any wrecking yard pretty cheap, blast, paint, install.

[Tx Firefighter]

There is absolutely no reason in the world to buy new control arms because you can't separate the old ball joints. None. Zip, nada.

Any decent mechanic shop in your town can pop them loose for pocket change. Just throw them in your car and run them up there. They'll bang them apart with an air hammer and fork attachment.

Worst case imaginable, you have to take a grinder and cutting wheel and cut the studs off the ball joints. Then you'd be left with a basic ball joint replacement job. Just fold the arm up as far as possible and run the cutting wheel in between the spindle and ball joint and slice through it.

Do what you want, but if you spend money on different arms for the reason you stated above, it's wasted money.

[Snoopy's C10]

This was useful. I am in the same boat and now I'm sticking with factory and just rebuilding them.