Replacing Front Control Arms - 1967 Chevelle
To say that this Chevelle project has gotten out of hand is a huge understatement. Originally, I had planned to lower, swap the wheels and drive this old street machine In fact, not long after I brought it home, I bought a set of our, then newly released, G-Comp Spindles and Tubular Control Arms. Then things went sideways with the “easy repaint” and ballooned into major surgery.
It took nearly two years to get back to the point I wanted to be at in the first few months. That’s a huge tipping point in a project like this. You seem to spend a lot of your time moving backwards and taking more and more parts off the car as you go along. This was a point that marked the turn-around for me on the Chevelle. Once I had gotten all the old chassis and firewall finishes stripped off and re-painted and coated, I could begin to start reassembling the car to get it back on the ground and rolling.
Since there’s about a year-and-a-half gap between some of these photos I want to show you where we started and then outline where things ended up. In between, there are a ton of other smaller and bigger projects that took place. Ranging from the trunk floor to the fuel system. My goal was to have the entire bottom side of the car finished and assembled before the remainder of the body work was done. Idea being that the underside will be wrapped and protected from dust and overspray. That’s still the plan but now encompasses the engine bay, front frame and dash areas as you will see progress move forward.
The biggest thing with tackling a suspension project is having the tools to make quick work of what can otherwise be a dirty and frustrating job. One such tool is a set of ball-joint and tie-rod separating forks for your air hammer. With the castle nuts loose but still engaged a quick hit with this tool gets things moving in the right direction very quickly. As always, be sure to use caution when removing coil springs as they can store an enormous amount of potential energy, even when the suspension is at full droop. This was especially true in this case as the car had extra heavy springs and was at near full extension with the full vehicle weight on them when fully assembled. The style at the time I guess.
Disassembly was straight forward. I removed all the components and set aside the spindles and brakes since they’d just been rebuilt with new cylinders and shoes. This is the same brake system & spindle that is employed on the front of the Sedan Delivery so in this process, I gained some good, used parts. No need to separate the brakes from the spindles as they’re both going to be replaced with new performance upgraded packages.
You can see that the comparison between old and new is quite dramatic. Even though the strength, look and function is wildly improved on these control arms, they improve the factory geometry and ride height. This makes them a great bolt-on improvement that can save you a ton of time over reconditioning your stock arms with a fresh coat of paint and pressing in new bushings and ball joints.
The new set of arms are powder coated with a durable gloss-black finish and include grease-able, friction free, Delrin bushings and polyurethane bumpers.
