Front lower control arm replacement

["ksgrimsr" <knut.s.grimsrud@xxxx>]

As some of you may know, I suffered a catastrophic lower control arm 
failure some time back (see message #31584).

I decided to install the stainless front lower control arms from 
Pierce Design, and thought I would share the experience with the 
group.

The stainless control arms from Brian Pierce are simply gorgeous. 
>From the construction and quality of the welding, it is clear that 
highly skilled labor went into their construction. Where accessible, 
the welds are ground flush with the surrounding material and the 
arms are nicely polishied, reflecting the quality and care of 
workmanship.

As advertized, the control arms are constructed of stainless steel, 
and the material used is much more substantial than the original 
stamped control arms. The steel the arms are constructed from is 
substantially thicker and more robust than the original soft-steel 
control arms. The overall impression is that the control arms are 
much more robust and rigid than the originals.

During assembly, I encountered a minor issue in installing the inner 
bushings into the arms. The first bushing pressed nicely into the 
first control arm with reasonable pressure. The second bushing, 
however, was not as firmly in place as I would prefer. Upon closer 
examination I discovered that the two new bushings I had were of 
different styles, and it's likely that the second bushing was 
slightly undersized compared with the first one. Since the first one 
was already pressed home it was not feasible for me to compare their 
dimensions with the calipers, so I cann't be sure what the looser 
fit was attributed to. I readily fixed this by squeezing the bushing 
slightly out of round and pressing it home with a little dab of 
locktite for good measure. I suspect this issue was with the bushing 
I had and not due to any dimensional tolerance problem with the 
control arm.

I similarly encountered a minor issue when pressing the lower ball 
joints home. The reinforcement sleeve on the new control arms are 
much more substantial than the soft steel sleeve of the original 
control arms. Also the sleeve through which the ball joint is 
pressed is also substantially harder than on the original control 
arms. This combined to make it excessively difficult to press the 
ball joints into the arms. I believe the control arm dimensions are 
actually correct for the Pierce control arms and that the difficulty 
in pressing the ball joints in stem from the harder sleeve material 
that the friction grooves in the ball joint don't as readuly cut 
into. A sufficiently large press (bigger than I've got) probably 
would have pressed the ball joints home, but I didn't see a need for 
such measures. Using a flat file I merely shaved down the friction 
ridges on the body of the ball joints a little in order to allow 
them to be pressed home with reasonable pressure. A couple minutes 
filing down the ridges on the ball joints a little was all it took 
and then the ball joints pressed home nicely. The arm dimensions 
matched up precisely so the snap ring on the ball joint lies flush 
with the top surface of the control arm.

The final issue I encountered when installing the arms actually did 
appear to be a minor dimensional tolerance variance with the control 
arms. The width of the control arms at the point where the shock is 
attached was 50/1000th too narrow on both of the control arms. On 
the original soft control arms, such variance is not a problem since 
the arms are so soft that you can just spread the sides a little. 
The Pierce control arms, however, are much beefier and much more 
rigid. This again was not a real problem since it was just a matter 
of shaving off 50/1000th of the width of the lower shock mount which 
was readily accomplished with a few strokes of the flat file.

I'm very impressed with the stainless control arms. They are 
beautifully crafted, and they are clearly substantially more robust 
than the originals. Nice work by Brian Pierce in providing another 
quality component to help support our cars.

Knut