Penny

[ekgguy]

Over the past couple of weekends, I have made a little progress on the front end.

Managed to get everything off.



Scraped a TON of who-knows-what off the crossmember



Starting the frame cleanup while waiting for the A-Arms to be sandblasted



Got the A-Arms back from sandblasting. Coated them with some Eastwood Rust Resolver, primed, then painted. Left is complete with new ball joints and control arm bushings. Right is waiting for the ball joint dust cover. For some reason, it came without one.



Lower arms are coated with Rust Resolver and are dry but need some more time. This weekend they will be primed and painted with the same black frame paint as the uppers, then ready for installation.



Side Note: I have been stockpiling these front end parts for the last couple of months. As the $$ was there, buy a couple of pieces here and a couple of parts there. Since I was not in a hurry, I purchased all of the stock replacement parts (tie rod ends, ball joints, bushings, etc) from Rockauto.com.
The pricing was pretty good, they beat the local parts houses around here. However, their customer service leaves something to be desired. One of the upper ball joints came without the dust cover/grease cover. I called Rockauto, figuring they would just ship me another one. No such luck. I could do either one of two things: 1. Remove the installed ball joint, send it back and upon them receiving it, they would ship another one. 2. I could purchase it again. Neither of those options appealed to me, as I really wanted to get the front end back together. So, I bought one locally and will not buy from Rockauto again.

Side Note II: I found a really good option for removing and installing the ball joints, both upper and lower. The uppers just bolt right in, no issues at all, although I did manage to put the first one in upside down. The local Autozone here in town has a tool lending program. You leave a deposit, take and use the tool, bring it back, they give you back your deposit, 0 out of pocket cost. Easy peasy. The entire process took maybe 20 minutes, getting the old ones out and the new ones installed.

Finally, since I was in a parts ordering mood, I decided to go with the Classic Performance Drop Spindle Brake Kits 6370SWBK6OE from Summit Racing.