Suspension rebuild

[KennedyHill]

I’m rebuilding the suspension on my ‘87. I’ve put new bushings and ball joints in the lower control arms, but I’m replacing the upper, stamped control arms with tubular control arms. Do I need to reinstall the alignment shims with the new control arms?

 

[animal]

Hard to say, dimn of the tubular control arms is likely different than the stock control arms. I would put them in and at least eyeball the camber with the truck sitting on the ground. You will at the very least want an alignment done before driving very much.

 

[Randy and Easton]

Agree with @animal on that. We did new upper and lower control arms from LMC and re used shims to get it to alignment shop. Perfect now

Randy and E

 

[Ricko1966]

I’m rebuilding the suspension on my ‘87. I’ve put new bushings and ball joints in the lower control arms, but I’m replacing the upper, stamped control arms with tubular control arms. Do I need to reinstall the alignment shims with the new control arms?

Check camber before taking it apart,shim it on reassembly to make camber match. Stagger the thicker shims and thinner shims front to back just like it was. Set toe and if it goes down the street without pull to left or right your good. Toe and camber are wear angles. Caster is not. So if your camber and toe are correct your tires are safe.

 

[Bloodhound1981]

I used Performance Online upper and lower tubular control arms with stock height springs. I assembled it first with the shims that were in the original upper arms. Way too much camber. Then I went with zero shims, just the spacer they came with. I still had too much camber. Then I realized they sell thinner spacers (not included of course) to get it back to correct camber if using stock height springs. Pain in the ass.