Ok help me out here please. I am so close to having my 67 on the road its killing me!!
I took it in to get the alignment done yesterday. I dropped it off and left, they called me about 10 minutes later and asked me to come back, there were some problems. I went back and they had the car up on the rack (2 racks away was a beautiful 69 ss with a control arm issue). The tech said that the bushing on the lower arm on the passenger side was slipping out to the metal sleeve. I looked at it and sure enough, it was about an 1/8th of an inch over. There was no part of the bushing on the other side of the sleeve, it was metal to metal. They told me that they couldn't fix other peoples work so I would have to take it home and fix it then take it back in. He also mentioned that it may have too much grease in the sleeve causing it to slip out. When I got it home I did some investigative work and found that the bolts hadn't been tightened down all the way. I was able to get the bushing to slide back into the sleeve. I then tightened down the bolts and waited to drive it. I drove it today and then checked the bushings again. They slid back out just not as much. Do I need to use my impact wrench and crank these things down to force it to stay in or am I pulling the front end apart again (which I really don't want to do) to fix this problem??

Some pictures would really help here..

Are the lock nuts on the bolts actually locking? Maybe you need to replace them, or replace the bushings with new ones.. If I understand your explanation that is..

They are brand new energy suspension bushings, polys.

Like Steve said, pics would definitely help. But if Im understanding you correctly, theres shouldnt be any room for it to slide back and forth unless the channel part of the frame is flared out for some reason. :confused:

I'd agree too. Unless the locations where the control arms fit up into are really tweaked, there's no way for a properly sized bushing and components thereof to move around down there once the through bolts are torqued.

Might even safety wire everything too??

pdq67

I have posted some pictures on my website. Go here: http://www.segebergs.com/camaro/issues/issues.html

This is of the lower control arm. It is the bushing the closest to the front of the car. I will try to get a pic of the other one, but I need to jack up the car to do that.

Thats what I thought. It looks flared out...mine doesnt have the room to slide out like yours has. As a matter of fact, I think I pretty much had to massage mine (with a BFH :D) into that channel part of the frame. Im thinkin you probably need to take it apart and get that part of the frame back straight. You might could do it without taking it apart, but it shouldnt have any extra room around the bushing for it to move.

I didn't need to apply the 6lb wrench to mine, but mine are tighter too.

If you want to try to fix it on the car, you may be able to remove the LCA bolt, and get a grade 8 bolt the same diameter and length, a pair of hardened fender washers, and a hardened nut. Use the Grade 8 in place of the LCA bolt (Grade 5) and just tighten the bejeezus out of it and see if you can get it to pull together. It's a lot easier to fix it right if you drop the LCA though.

I know it's the right way to do it, but pulling the front end apart again after getting the car on the road finally after almost 5 years just kills me. I think I might try crank down on the bolt to see if I can get it to move, if not it I will be pulling the front end again. Isn't that exciting?!?!

i know you're anxious, but i think you'll appreciate the feeling of knowing it was done right...

If you're going to be bending the subframe for a better fit, find out which part is bent and bend that.
If you bend the side that is not bent, there may be bolt alignment problems as well as your control arm may fit slightly skewed.

Remove the control arm and look through the 4 holes. All 4 holes should line up perfectly when looking through them.
That could be a clue as to where the bend may be..

Anyone in western WA bored enough to come play with some control arm excitement?!?! It's always better with more people. Especially ones that really know what they are doing.

Ok, so I spent some quality time under the car. It seems as the bushings are about a 1/16th or so too long. I had to force the control arm into place and there was no wiggle room for getting it in. The control arm appears to move on the bushing but the bushing itself is wedged in there pretty good. Is it time to pull out the cut off saw and do a little shortening of the bushing and sleeve?? Not something that I really want to do, that is for sure.