Anybody know who makes an adjustable lower control arm for a 70 GS? I need a shorter than stock control arm. Keith
Keith, tried to reach you last night but guess I had the wrong number. Shoot me an e-mail with another number that I can reach you at tonight. Been real busy, but trying to please everybody at once. As for the stock length, it's real close to 22" center to center. I am in agreememnt with Dave on getting rid of the SSM setup & drop mounting brackets. You should be fine with std length. If you really do need a shorter lower arm in the factory mounting locations, something is NOT right. Look at ALL mounting brackets and inspect welds for cracks and/or movement. SSM setups tear a car up real fast & real easy, not a good match for factory welds. We don't offer anything shorter than std length lowers, and don't plan on making anything like that. You are the first to ask, which makes me think the problem lies elsewhere. PS- E-mail direct to me works best for contacting me. Hope that helps.
Paul, Measuring the Southside bars in relation to the stock control arm position, I have found that my 12 bolt is sitting 3/4" farther back than the usual stock location when using 22" as the length that stock control arms are. My car sits very low on the tires and I run a spool which hampers clearance issues. I will use an adjustable arm and start with the stock 22" length and shorten it up a bit to hopefully cure my problem. I just want to move the rear approximately 1/2" shorter than stock to make room for slicks while minimizing having to roll much of the quarter panel. Thanks, K.
Not sure why your car is different than so many others, but you are looking at it & not me so I can't see it all. Another thing to watch for, is that you probably have run things where they are for a while. Now you are pulling the rear axle forward 3/4". That will shove the driveshaft into the trans 3/4". Make sure it doesn't bottom out, and also the splines in the yoke always twist, and may need to be clearanced. Just remove yoke & chuck up in a lathe, and bore out old original splines that never got twisted. This allows the shaft to move forward without binding. Something all should look at if changing pinion angle a bunch too. This will destroy transmission and hurt 60 ft times. Years ago changing my pinion angle, my 60 ft times fell off. We noticed this issue, fixed it, and it let suspension move like it is supposed to, and 60's went right back. PS- Also, we would suggest not trying to fix your length issue all with the bottom bars. I think you will need adj uppers (not sure if you have them) to get wheel centered where you want it AND correct pinion angle. If you do it ALL with the lowers, you will have some weird positive pinion angle & traction issues. Tire will clear though Hope that helped!
Keith, Hopefully we'll get to see your beautiful GS again at a Buick event in the near future. In the mean time, I'd like to throw out a few things that I've learned from using adjustable control arms. The main problem that I had was this. Because the control arms are not parallel (uppers to uppers or lowers to lowers), when you lengthen or shorten them the mounting points move either closer together or further apart. Of course the rear end and frame bracketry stays the same and you get a huge bind. What I found was you had very little adjustment before things just wouldn't bolt up anymore. I really don't know if you could take a full .5" out of the lower arm and have it bolt up with out binding unless you moved the rearend brackets. I think of it like this, if you have two lines on a piece of paper, angled towards each other with 2" between the point where they hit the edge of the paper. The 2" dimension would grow quite a bit if you cut some off of that edge. I hope I didn't confuse you any. Good luck and hope to see that car again soon.
Paul, Thanks for the info, if I could reach you by phone I could probably explain this to you a lot easier than trying to capture it in writing. My Southside bars, installed many years ago, were apparently not installed in the proper location in relation to where the stock lower arms were. When you measure the center of the hole at the front of the lower control arm position and bring it to the back of the car to wear the stock lower control arms bolt to (with the SS bars still installed) it should be 22".........it's not...it's 22 3/4".....I would need lower control arms 22 3/4" long to bolt up where my rearend currently sits. My rearend sits approximately 3/4" farther back than the original stock location due to the SS bars probably not positioned correctly when the holes were drilled for the brackets from the start. If I was to disconnect the SS bars and bolt a bone stock pair of lower arms on my car right now the rearend would have to move forward 3/4" for the bolt holes on the rear to line up. Make sense? ...if I can take advantage of another 1/4 to 1/2" forward movement after putting the rearend back in the stock location and still have room for tire growth, all the better. I do have adjustable upper arms so that I can correct the pinion angle and I will have to shorten the driveshaft for sure.......on another note, I like your anti-rollbar, a quality piece! Shayne, thanks for the input and your compliment, your point is well taken. Keith
If it were me, I would go with stock length on the bottoms. If you have ANY kind of correct pinion angle right now, they would have had to lengthen the uppers to get it with the incorrect install on the lowers. So, if you put a stk lower on it, you will probably have to shorten the uppers to get pinion angle right again. That will bring tire forward even more. I think you will be VERY happy with this & save you a LOT of hassles. If you go shorter than stock, you may need to have driveshaft shortened as well.
Not to steer anyone away from Paul at HR...But take a look at the Art Morrison website. They have some nice looking kits for GM A bodies. But I WILL be getting Paul's bolt in roll bar kit. How we doin' on those Poly BB motor mounts??
Hi Guys, Adam....check out this thread containing the answer you seek concerning the Poly 455 mounts from Paul elsewhere on the board. http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51188 Hope this answers your question!:TU:
