Bruce Sinclair

Just got the car back together after replacing just about everything in the front end. The highlight of it all was the replacement upper A arm bushings I got from Paul Gray down under ( $70 Delivered ). These blue urethane beauties made a tremendous difference in the ability of upper A arm to maintain correct geometry under load. My old bushings were really trashed , allowing at least one full inch of fore and aft movement at the upper ball joint, which by the way was still nicely polished inside with zero play when we regreased them and replaced the boots. While probably not impossible this job is likely best done when doing a steering rack, pan gasket, or motor mount change. We did all of the above. Griffiths supplied the rack which was $401 including rack boots, crush rings, tie rods, and new bushings for the rack. After 20 years my car still had the aluminum ball joints installed, so those were updated as well. My motor mounts were so bad that they fell apart when we pulled them off and the engine shocks had been bottomed out for quite some time. Now it is like a whole different car, much smoother no more nasty vibrations or steering misbehavior. Some BTDT for the archives would be : whenever doing a ball joint update or other upper/lower ball joint work get all new nuts for the eccentics and ball joints, mine were pretty bad. The steering joint at the rack can be a real PITA to get loose from the old rack, you may want to consider installing a new one with the rack. The ball joint brackets were a supreme PITA to get out of the the lower arms, they were litterally destroyed by the time we got them out, only to find out that the new brackets that were packaged with the ball joints were for the same side ( there is a right and a left bracket). The upper A arm bushings can be troublesome to get the second bushing installed but my 230lbs on it seated it eventually. Wally's ball joint separation trick works as advertised ( Thanks Wally ! ). Best of all the whole job was done with common hand tools. The oil pan gasket was changed durring the process. It took about 27 hours to do the whole job with 2 928 owners who do all thier own work. If it had not been for the stubborn parts we could have saved about 10 hours off the job. One last tip for the archives would be about the starter solenoid. We removed the starter while doing the work and upon reinstallation of the starter the soleniod would engage, the starter gear would extend but, the starter would not spin. After allot of head scratching and troubleshooting we found that one of the screws that hold the solenoid had apparently vibrated loose and fell out some time before ( the starter was rebuilt locally last March ).When we replaced the screw (M 5 x.8 28mm long)everything worked OK. I guess with the screw missing a contact was either misaligned or loose enough to not allow power to reach the starter motor. I took pictures of the upper A arm bushings installed in the car, email me if you are interested. Parts list for the job: lower ball joints,eccentrics,upper A arm bushings, upper ball joint boots, steering rack boots, steering rack, steering pump feed hose, ball joint brackets, tie rods, engine mounts, engine shocks, oil pan gasket,new nuts and hardware. For bushings euro635@hotmail.com , for racks www.griffiths.com jumpytoad@mindspring.com
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Bruce Sinclair

Steering Racks www.griffiths.com
Upper A arm Bushings email euro635@hotmail.com