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Upper control arm, left or right?

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Old Aug 22, 2005 | 08:39 PM
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Default Upper control arm, left or right?

Might be an embarrassing answer, but how can you tell the difference between the left and the right upper control arms?
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Old Aug 22, 2005 | 10:05 PM
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Steve, one side is straight edged, the other side kinda has a slight "angled" bend in it. I believe the "angled bend" goes towards the "front" of the car.
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Old Aug 22, 2005 | 10:17 PM
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I believe that the rear side of the arm is shorter than the front side. What I mean is that one side of the A arm is shorter than the other this side goes toward the rear of the car.

Neal
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Old Aug 22, 2005 | 11:06 PM
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Paul and Neal, thanks. It certainly does look like the shorter side of the A-arm is towards the rear. I have an issue with the tires rubbing very slightly on the lower fender opening towards the rear during lock to lock turns. The alignment shop has about 3/4" of spacers on the rear control rod bolt and none on the front on both sides. Today I talked to a guy in Wayne, Illinois who used to own 17 vettes, most of which he did frame off restorations on. He said it's very easy to get the control arms switched, but I think I will have to rule that out. I think I'm going to make an appointment to have him check it out.
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Old Aug 23, 2005 | 06:42 AM
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while installing my front control arm i noticed i had mixed up the upper one although i thought i had keep side by side but somehow during the restoration process i had swapped them . but it is quite easy to notice the difference , specially when you try to get the balljoints in the knuckle you can see the lower and upper are not in line



art-corvette
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Old Aug 23, 2005 | 07:02 AM
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Art, that photo nails it. Absolutely no doubt now that they are correctly installed. Thanks for both of your replies!
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