Does the car need the weight of the engine installed to compress the springs enough to install new upper tubular A-arms? Or a spring compressor?

Engine is out. Removed stock upper A-arm. Installed new DSE upper A-arm to frame mounts.

At the upper arms lowest swing (bump stop hitting), the ball joint won't reach the spindle (1" from bottom of bolt to spindle hole). The stock A-arm came right out, but the geometry of the DSE to stock is different.

I tried jacking the lower arm up. It got closer, but started raising the car before I could get it into the spindle.

Am I missing something fundamental here? If I compress the spring and get the spindle bolted to the A-arm, it seems the spring is going to be under tension, essentially pulling at the ball joints. Is this right? That tension wasn't there when I removed the stock A-arm? Do I need to remove the spring and cut it?

Thanks for the help.
Scott

There should be tension, quite a bit of tension. If there wasn't before, you might check to make sure the spring is seated correctly in the pockets, you may have to rotate it a bit to get the ends lined up, but...I'd consider it highly unusual to be able to get the ball joints back together without either the wieght of the engine or a spring compressor or both. My old springs (saggy originals with 1 coil cut) still were not so loose that i could get the balljoints back on without the weight of the motor to help.

this won't have anything to do with the a-arms... the distance between the balljoints is fixed by the spindle and has not changed.

You need the weight of the engine to be able to compress the spring enough to get the ball joints bolted in the spindle.Or a couple of heavy friends standing on the frame will do.

Ok. But I'm still missing something here. I'm not sure why when I took it apart there was NO tension. Spring is seated correctly. Does a stock upper A-arm have any bump stop on it (mine didn't)? Or is it metal to metal? Maybe the difference is in how far the stock arm could swing down vs. the bump stop limit on the new arm. I followed a Chiltons manual for removing the upper A-arm, and it didn't mention that it would be under tension, it just said to support the lower with jack. If during dissasembly this had had the tension that it is going to take to install, that could have hurt bad.

Just put the wife in the engine bay, but she was not heavy enough. I have mixed emotions about that at the moment.

Was going to do A-arms, then steering box/components, then put engine back in. Guess I'll change up the order.

Thanks.

Just put the wife in the engine bay, but she was not heavy enough. I have mixed emotions about that at the moment.
Dang, If I'd ask my wife to stand in there for weight, she might kill me. You need to get a couple of big boys like me in there. I've been told many times I'm just dead weight... ;)

Put a chain around and thru upper control arm and around bottom of floor jack and bolt chain so it a loop and make sure the floor jack is under lower ball joint and you can compress spring to conect ball joints and you don't need anybody to help you I done it that way for years with no engine installed

The original A-arms shoud have had pressed in rubber bumpers out past the upper shock mounting point. They probably just dry rotted off the car.

What kind of springs are you installing. Short high rate springs (like Hotchkis 600#) often don't have too much tension until the car is on the ground but, the long stock type springs are usually a major PITA to get in w/o a compressor or the weight of the vehicle to squash them down a few inches.

Paul D.

Thanks everyone!

Edd, Took me a minute to visualize the chain trick, but I think I have it and will try it out tomorrow.

PDQUICK, Yes, they must've dry rotted because they weren't there. That could extra distance could explain why there was no tension...and why the suspension sounded like heck on the backside of a speed bump.

BUCKMIZ, It's all how you sell it. I asked her if she could "bounce the car a little for me", not necessarily what I may been thinking..."let's see you put some of those cheesecakes to good use."

Engine is out. Removed stock upper A-arm. Installed new DSE upper A-arm to frame mounts.
Scott

Are you talking about the cross shaft with the offset bushings or DSEs coilover conversion?

Brian