Topic: 1969 upper control arm crack

[indianfire]

Hello I'm was the process of restoring my upper control arms and noticed a crack. the crack is about 1/2" long and is just outside where the ball joint rivets in and the arm begins to roll. It appears to me that this possibly could have been caused by a machining flaw, due to the fact that the end of my control arm stops short and doesn't roll over the end like other pictures I've seen, but that's only speculation. The parts are off of a 69 Mach 1 Q code and  I guess I'm wondering how I should proceed. I'm trying to be as correct as possibly and the car will probably see very little drive time.
thanks in advance
Jon

[Bob Gaines]

Hello I'm was the process of restoring my upper control arms and noticed a crack. the crack is about 1/2" long and is just outside where the ball joint rivets in and the arm begins to roll. It appears to me that this possibly could have been caused by a machining flaw, due to the fact that the end of my control arm stops short and doesn't roll over the end like other pictures I've seen, but that's only speculation. The parts are off of a 69 Mach 1 Q code and  I guess I'm wondering how I should proceed. I'm trying to be as correct as possibly and the car will probably see very little drive time.
thanks in advance
Jon

I have seen it before .Like most things it can be fixed but unless you live in Cuba and have to reuse everything better to not. Effort to fix vs. another leans towards another . The short answer is that typically it makes the most sense to replace it.

[indianfire]

awesome thanks for the input i'll probably get a hold of rare parts. they seemed to have some pretty nice stuff.

[J_Speegle]

awesome thanks for the input i'll probably get a hold of rare parts. they seemed to have some pretty nice stuff.

If your doing a restoration some pieces they have have a nice while others sill require more work to redo what they do to the parts   and others are not close enough to get by. Like every supplier (in general) you need to pick and choose through their offerings

Some suppliers do powder coating while just makes the effort not worth the extra work as one example

[Rsanter]

Typical stress crack
I have seen many of those arms break off the entire ball joint area.
If you are just a show car and must have those correct original arms then have it TIG welded.
If it's a driver then replace it....no questions

Bob