SPC front lower control arms with Howe balljoints for 68-72 Chevelle

[Blown353]

SOLD 12/27

Item Location (City/State): Lodi, CA

Price: $625, would prefer local pickup but will split shipping with buyer

Description:

Working on my car again, and making a few changes...

I have a set of brand new, never installed SPC lower control arms for a 64-72 A-Body. The arms have delrin bushings and the optional SPC progressive rate bump stops are included.

These arms have Howe rebuildable ball joints with Energy Suspension boots installed and are from the latest production from SPC with a proper press fit for the on-size Howe ball joint housings (they were ordered this way.) Some earlier production SPC arms had bores that were made slightly oversize to fit Moog "problem solver" ball joints which have an oversize OD, and if you tried to install the on-size Howe ball joint housing into the earlier arms with a hole sized for the oversized Moog problem solvers, the Howe joints weren't a tight press fit in the arm and they could back out if not tack welded to the arm. No such worries with these.

Note: the Howe ball joints currently have an F/B body studs installed as my ATS spindles have B-body tapers in them (I upgraded from a B-spindle swap many years ago, and bought the ATS spindles with B-body tapers in them so I could install them onto the arms and balljoints I already had rather than having to change ball joints.) If you want to use these with standard A-body ball joint taper spindles, you'll need to swap the studs. Stock height A-body studs are Howe #22480 and run $30/each and are a simple job to swap (or you can go with taller studs if using stock A-body spindles which helps camber gain, roll center, and and bump steer.)

Only reason I'm selling these is I'm modding the upper mount on the frame for a true coilover and am switching to dedicated coilover-only lower arms with a dropped lower mount for my low ride height.

[Blown353]

Bump with a price drop.

[tigerchevelle]

Wish you had these for sale last yr.
What are you switching to?

[Blown353]

Originally Posted by tigerchevelle

Wish you had these for sale last yr.
What are you switching to?

I'm switching to either Global West CTA-42EXT or QA1 lower arms that are made to mount a coilover directly through the spherical bearing without needing a shock-style crossbar and have a dropped lower mount so you can run a longer coilover for decent suspension travel without bottoming out the coilover on bump.

When I bought these arms several years ago I was planning on continuing to run a standard shock/spring, trimming the coils for roughing in the ride height and then using the SPC spring seat shims for fine ride height adjustment and everything would have been fine, but I now plan on modding the frame with a raised upper coilover mount to install a longer coilover for full suspension travel, and will use either the GW CTA-42EXT or QA1 coilover-only lower arms.

The SPC arms will work with coilovers, but you need to add the thick reinforcement plate in the spring pocket and also use a crossbar on the bottom of the coilover, and I don't like the idea of concentrating the weight of the car through the crossbar at the center of the large spring platform in the SPC arm even with the reinforcement plate. The arm was designed for a standard spring which spreads out the load over a larger area near the edges of the spring platform where the platform is the strongest and deflection is the least.

The car currently has a set of Global West CTA-42L (standard spring) arms and double adjustable Varishocks that I'm also going to be selling once I get the frame modded and can remove them. I don't want to remove them yet as then the car is sitting without front suspension and I can’t push it around or out of the shop easily.

I'd have it done by now (or at least be further along) but I'm once again working on someone else's car while mine sits and gathers more dust...

[camcojb]

blah blah blah... just get it done.

[Blown353]

Originally Posted by camcojb

blah blah blah... just get it done.

Lol!

As soon as I'm done with this 67 El Camino I'm back on my car... Honest!

I actually did start to work on it about a month ago only to mess up the upper ball joint tapers in my ATS spindles and stop any forward progress... Now I have to machine out the old messed up upper inserts, machine new upper inserts, and shrink fit the new inserts into the spindles with liquid nitrogen.

Speedtech doesn't make the ATS spindles with the ball joint taper inserts anymore and don't have any leftover inserts, so I can't send them in for repair and have to fix them myself. But that's what I get for letting the car sit for 10 years and forgetting what ball joint taper I ordered the spindles in... Went to install my new upper control arms and tried installing a 1.5 in 12 taper stud into a 2.0 in 12 taper spindle... Oops. Should have paid more attention before tightening the nuts. Damage was bad enough a taper reamer wouldn't clean up the spindle, now I've got a mess to fix.