With the front clip off my 55 olds 88, I went looking for the cause of my excessive negative camber problem on the drivers side. I found both upper A arm mounts had fatigued the metal they were spot welded to, cracked and allowed the insides of the A-arms to rub the upper shock mount, rubbing all the way through (see pictures). This car has 41,000 original miles and was taken off the road sometime in the late 60s. The excessive stick weld snot repair you see is an old repair and they did not get them in the proper location. Has anyone seen this before and was it common?
As much as I hate the idea of a clip, this sure looks like a good excuse for one. Fatigued metal will have to be replaced anyways. I'd have to wait to hear if this is a common thing or not, it seems unusual, but what would cause it - a lot of driving on rough roads? Shocks worn out or taken off? I'll grant that on modern highways it's not that likely to happen again, but for what a later GM frame clip costs you might be way ahead to weld one in.
I've heard of similar stuff happening on 50's rides when stiffer than stock springs were used. Either way, if you clip it make sure you find a clip thats narrow enough to look stock because none of those cars with the wheels sticking out of the front wheel wells are fooling anybody and they all look like shit.
We've seen too many examples of crappy weld repairs like that. All too common. Funny...I'm no fabricator/welder, by any stretch of the imagination...and even I can do better than most of the scary cobbled junk we sometimes see.
I am 90% sure I saw a pic of the same mount, all welded like that, on hamb. I just don't know if it was Olds, but might have been, as I read all the Olds topics. I don't know how you could find it on a search.
Yeah, clip it. If that's what you see, there may be a ton of other bad shit you don't see. Measure up what you have for the track width and shop wisely for a donor clip. Bob
Hey, Ask yourself...............do ya really wanna drive a fucking Camero or a street rod Locate & replace the necessary suspension pieces with quality products, and hire a journeyman welder ( not some pizza faced kid workin outa his momma's garage with a squirtgun welder) to cut out and reweld any bad metal. If you do this, you'll enjoy wears of troublefree/safe driving in your Oldsmobile . " A government by the people, for the people " My ass !
Rat fink, most likely your pontiac has a very similar setup as it is one of the BOPS cars. The rest of my frontend and frame for that matter is in great shape except for this, so we will cut, reinforce and reweld. It amazes me the car was driven long enough to do damage like that. It must have been making a hell of a racket. Sent from my DROID device using the TJJ mobile app
I would think that the car was in an accident at some point in it's life. Maybe an good hit on a curb. I would even say it might have been built on a Monday. Those were bad days at the plant at times. Could have been a bad piece of metal that got past quality control together with a bad day welding.
I am going to make a guess here and say that the car spent most of its 41,000 miles on a dirt road or that the 41,000 is closer to 141,000 or both. I have worked on UPS trucks and old mail carrier cars when I lived in the country that had the same type of dammage. It comes as a rule from running 90 to nuthin up and down dirt or rock country side roads. I sepnt one fall fishplating UPS trucks in a small town in the Ozarks. There was not a truck with more than 50k and the oldest truck was 5 years old. The spring mounts had completely broken themselves out of the chassis.
If the frame is straight, you could use a jag like zman did on the big body buick, elpolacko on a 57 olds.. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24785 http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=739171&showall=1
I'd also think that the odometer had been around at least once and the car had 141,000+ on it rather than 41,000. That used to be the standing joke years ago before they added the extra number on the odometer. "look my car is new again with 5 miles on it. Rough roads, bad part to begin with or wreck, take your choice on the cause. One thing I see is that who ever put the shocks on overtightened the nuts with an air wrench until they destroyed the bushings so there may be more suspect work on the front end besides the scab welds. It can most likely be fixed but the fuss and expense may be more than you want to deal with if you aren't capable of doing it yourself. The front end needs to be cleaned up and you need to figure out what the original damage was and how to repair it. Not just the welding but how to move the pieces around so that they are in the correct position before they are welded back in place. Before you get too far on it though, price out the rebuild parts for the whole front end and check the availability. That may weigh in heavily in on if you repair it or decide to subframe or do a suspension swap. Actually Kanter shows a deluxe rebuild kit for 539.00 and 65.00 for the idler arm if you buy it with the kit. 600 in rebuild parts, a new set of shocks and the cost of rebuilding that side of the frame if that is the only damage on the frame. I'd suggest checking not only that side but closely check the other side and the rest of the frame for more damage that has or hasn't been repaired before going too far with repairing that corner.
Just to ad to that cost I may consider replacing the controll arm as I believe I see significant wear on the Arm in the pictures. To get the control arm mounts in the correct place a front end machine would be advisable, at the very least a pair of portable turning plates and portable caster camber gauge.
Sometimes you can buy a whole, running, beater you can cut a clip out of for $500. On something as big as an Olds, you have a lot of options for what will fit. We brought my '57 Pontiac in and I see the lower control arm spring pockets have some rot and I'm thinking a clip for that car, because a rebuild plus a disc brake conversion will cost $750 or more. Whereas I have an '88 Caprice that drives fine, but is rusted to hell, just sitting there waiting to be cut up.
Once you get the upper arm out of the way, you should be able to slice the welds with a the super thin cut off disc on a die grinder, and then knock the bracket off. There just might be some old spot weld marks, etc, on both parts underneath, that would get it back in the right spot.
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