Are ball joints on control arms Brake specific?

[ncsurveyor]

I ordered new Tubular control arms And just noticed on the invoice beside the ball joints it says drum brakes. I also ordered a kit to swap to disk brakes. I didn’t realize the ball joints were specific to brake type. Is this gonna mess me up? Do I need disk brake ball joints?

[Ben IV]

I'd say that means you need spindles for 67-70 balljoints. What year did you order the spindles for?

[ncsurveyor]

Well i originally ordered updated spindles for 73-87 but was notified today they are on backorder until end of july. That's what got me looking into what ball joints came with my control arms. I think i'm gonna change my spindle order to the 63-70 spindles and if I do that i'm assuming everything should work. I just didn't know if those ball joints were specifically made to fit drum brake systems and would not work on disk brakes.

[basketcase]

Disc brake ball joint shafts are larger than drum brake ball joint shafts but disc brake joints will fit in drum brake control arms. If you ordered control arms for drum brakes and they come with ball joints the shaft will be too small for the later disc brake spindles.

Tom

[May70]

The specs of the balljoints (sizes) are different because of the disc brake spindle vs the drum brake assy.

In other words the same set of balljoints that worked on a drum setup will NOT work on a disc brake spindle. That fact is independent of your control arms however if you change control arms you will probably need different size ball joints to press into the CA.