Topic: 66 Upper Control Arm Shafts

[bryancobb]

I am pretty sure these are the OEM assembly-line parts I acquired.  The owner of a very original 60,000 mile Metuchen C-Code coupe is resto-modding his car and I got all of his front suspension stuff.  His car was JAN 66 an mine is MAR 66.  The brake drums are OEM and have a lot of meat left before reaching wear limits.  They appear to have never been turned.  Ball joints have the correct (C2 I think?) rubber boots but they are not usable. 

If there is no reason to believe these are not original, I am going to spend the time and trouble to "deluxe" them and put them on my car.  They must have been very well greased because there is only 0.002" to 0.005" radial and axial play between the inner threads and outer threads.

[jwc66k]

To be truthful, I used Moog replacements (K-8053) and found minor (read not easily seen) differences. The big problem was the O-rings wearing enough to break on re-installation. I got replacement O-rings from Grainger.
What you need to do is use a home-made spacer on the A-arm when torquing the shaft bushings. See 1966 Comet, Falcon, Fairlane and Mustang Shop Manual, section 3, page 13, fig 7. It a 3/4 pipe 7 7/16 inch long. Grease the ends well before you assemble them and use a couple of zerk fitting to add more grease. Then install the plugs.
Note, the head markings on the two bolts are for a grade 7 bolt.
Jim