74_stingray

'75

I was hoping that it was just poor lighting in the photo and I was mistaken, but at least , like you say, the fix is easy at this point. All I would do is remove the shock, put a piece of all thread through the shock hole with a washer and nut on each end, compress the spring slightly then unbolt the upper shaft, guide it off the studs, rotate it and right back on. The all thread and nuts is what I always use to remove and install the springs, no danger involved!

74_stingray

'75

BEJ

Techoca,

Did you use the POL supplied bushings and if so, how did you go about pressing them in? Just curious because I am having a tough time getting them to go in. I have a press but no dice. I am being very cautious so as not to put to much strain on the CA in the process.

Thanks,
Bryan (BEJ)

Vette5311

I took the bushing out of the shell, cleaned of all the paint off and put a thin layer of grease on it and pressed it in separately side and side, (do not press across the arms) Do not forget to put the cross shaft in before pushing the 2nd bushing in. Then I put some silicone grease on the bushing insert and pushed it it separately. Good Luck

gearheadz

I used the same method. Much easier and less possibility of tweaking the arm.

An old school trick that some say works ... put the shells in the freezer the night before you plan to install the bushings. Theory is that the cold contracts the steel making easier to press in.

Mark

74_stingray

BEJ

All good advice. Thanks guys.

Bryan

74_stingray

After taking the car for alignment, it turns out that I can’t get enough negative camber to suit me with with the shafts offset to the outside. It required huge stack of shims to get .5 degrees of positive camber (I’m aiming for .25 negative camber) and I am out of bolt. I will reverse the shafts this weekend. Good news is the car did drive good as it is and I was able to get 5.5 degrees positive caster. The car had great high speed stability, took it to the century mark beautifully.

Primoz

That is with milled shafts or without? But still the positive caster is almost the same as with Van Steel tubular arms.

74_stingray

Primoz,
I installed Performance Online upper control arms which use the factory style shafts with no modifications. I chose to use the Moog offset shafts as opposed to the factory shafts, now I will be flipping the offset to the opposite direction that they are currently installed. The POL shafts have 4 degrees of caster built in.

gearheadz

Eddy, wow that's a lot of shims to run out of threads! I have a feeling I'm going to have the same issue since my Moog offset shafts are rotated to the outside too. After waiting what seemed a lifetime, I finally got upper arms from POL that were fabricated correctly. So, my front suspension finally back together. Although my motor is out of the car and I have no shims installed, I noticed the car has an abnormal amount of positive camber. It just looks wonky! I can't envision when I put the motor back in and add shims its going to resolve the camber. So, I'll probably reverse mine too. Let us know how the shaft change pans out.

Mark

74_stingray

Mark, it’s good to hear you have the upper control arm issue resolved!
I flipped the right side shaft last night, it’s super easy to do, I will flip the left tonight when I get home from work. After flipping the right side it only took two small shims to get the camber to zero, so I messed up flipping them the first time, no big deal. All you need to do is support the lower control arm with very little upward pressure, knock the bolts out, insert a punch or whatever you have handy into the arm and rotate 180 degrees, pop the bolts back into the hole, done. I will report back after taking the car back to the alignment shop next week, it’s going to rain today and Friday so it’s going to wait until then.

gearheadz

Eddy, that's GREAT news! Thanks for the tip on shaft bolts. Sounds like a breeze. Look forward to hearing how alignment goes.

Mark

74_stingray

Mark, when I stated zero, that was with my angle finder, I thought it was close. I downloaded an app for iPhone that Richard454 put me onto and determined 5 degrees positive camber, ouch. I inserted shims and rechecked several times, after inserting 1” of shims it only brought down to 2.5 degrees. The way I interpret the problem is that there are only two possibilities. 1) upper arms too long 2) lower arms too short, or both I suppose. Either way I cannot possibly push the arms far enough toward the engine to achieve slightly negative camber, my goal is -.25. If that’s not obtainable then there’s no gain from the desired additional caster.

I am calling it quits on this endeavor at this point, I am going to lick my wounds and have decided to purchase Global West control arms, which I did yesterday. In fact the lowers arrived this morning to my surprise. I still believe that POL’s control arms will be an excellent choice on a street driven car. I like the use of factory cross shafts and bushings and think it’s a good design just suffering some teething pains in this stage. I want to add that the folks at Performance Online have been nothing but professional and courteous, I would have no issues doing future business with these folks.

That’s just where I am. I am confident in the integrity of the frame of my car, it’s not bent and has only 1/8” of cradle sag.
I will report back to this thread upon alignment of the Global West parts.
Eddy

gearheadz

Eddy, I'm so sorry to hear about the issues with the POL arms. Unlike you I'm so upset right now We have both spent (and wasted) so much time and energy on these POS arms! After reading your post, I measured the distance between the shaft center lines and ball joint grease fittings on both upper and lower POL and OEM arms. This is what I found:

OEM upper: 9.875
POL upper: 10.50
OEM lower: 15.3125
POL lower: 15.125

So the POL uppers are roughly .625 longer than the OEM uppers along with the slightly shorter POL lowers (.1875) yields a .8125 difference, top to bottom. I assume with your positive comment on POL that you were able to return the arms for a refund?

Mark

74_stingray

Mark, I am waiting to hear back from them again, I received an email today, the dialogue has been cordial. I do not expect to have problems.
Eddy

74_stingray

Mark, I believed after what I had done this week that about 1” was going to be close. I wasn’t sure if it was upper or lower, but not surprised it’s likely both, no way I am shimming that much.
Sorry to be the bearer of the bad news.
Eddy

gearheadz

Eddy, it's not your fault. I appreciate you sharing the info. Obviously, POL doesn't test fit their in-house fabricated components on an actual vehicle before they offer it to the public. Unfortunately, the old adage "You get what you pay for" once again has been proven as fact. Unfortunately, I don't have the budget for the Global West arms so I'll probably have to go back to the OEM arms unless POL can send me ANOTHER set (third one) of upper arms quickly. I think the lowers are close enough to work with. The uppers are out of the question. The POL arms were kind of an impulse buy because they were so affordable. It's really turned out to be a bad decision on my part. Thanks.
Mark