Tech Week-'63-'64 Galaxie Control Arm Repair

While helping a buddy rebuild the front suspension on his '63 Galaxie, we discovered that the lower control arm bushings were completely destroyed and loose in the control arm. We figured that some new bushings would fix everything. We then discovered that the rear bushings on the lower control arms had completely worn out the bosses where they pressed into. A couple of junkyard lower control arms would fix the problem, but the only control arms we knew about were 100 miles away. Repairing the control arms we had was a better solution.

Here is one of the bushings:



The lower control arms faired no better:



I ground away the lip that formed the boss that the bushing would press into:





A new boss was made from a piece of 2 1/8" O.D. x 1/4" wall tubing. the I.D. was bored out to 1.910", which was .010" smaller that the O.D. of the bushing:



Here is the finished boss:



The boss was centered on the hole and tacked to the control arm:



While I used a TIG welder to weld the boss onto the control arm, a MIG welder would also work well:



A hydraulic press will not work to to press the bushings into the control arms. I used a piece of 3/4" Acme thread, and some pieces of heavy wall tubing to install the bushings:





One of the pieces of tubing pushes on the shell of the bushing to press the bushing into the control arm:



Here is the bushing installed:

 

Good article and information.

I did something very similar on my '62 Monterey to eliminate the very expensive "Anti-Harsh" suspension bushings in the lower control arm and replace them with the much cheaper regular Galaxie bushings.

Wish I had taken more pictures at the time, but here is the finished product.


Keep up the good work.