1st Gen Dakota Tech 1987 - 1996 Dodge Dakota Tech - The ultimate forum for technical help on the 1st Gen Dakota.

Upper control arm mount

Thread Tools
 
Search this Thread
 
  #11  
Old 12-24-2015, 01:22 PM
marcar1993's Avatar
marcar1993
marcar1993 is offline
Captain
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 533
Likes: 0
Received 1 Like on 1 Post
Default

My truck needs bushings too. I understand the fear that wrenching on those bolts could damage the mount ears. While yes they are the alignment spot, no one touches these as they are for caster/camber, and a normal alignment is a toe-and-go. Here's my plan, and what I've done sucessfully on other trucks. Get a can of spray paint, any bright color, now clean up and paint around the bolts, this will give you a perfect starting point for alignment, put it back together in the same place it came from, in the shadow of the old bolt. Then, if you cannot easily break the bolts free, cut them. Use a grinder, sawzall, torch, or whatever you need to, just BE CAREFUL of everything around them. Then just go get new high grade bolts, grade 8 sae or 10.9 metric or higher with locking nuts and reassemble. Done. Do it yourself, if you need to farm out anything, just bring the control arms to a shop to press in and out the bushings.
Also, if your balljoints are welded in, get new control arms from a junk yard or something and put in new balljoints the right way.
 
  #12  
Old 12-25-2015, 01:34 PM
RalphP's Avatar
RalphP
RalphP is offline
Champion
Join Date: Jan 2013
Location: Northwest Louisiana
Posts: 4,737
Received 368 Likes on 340 Posts
Default

The only problem with generic bolts is that the current one are T_headed so that they will not twist when you tighten the caster/camber adjustments.

And if most of the alignment shops where you live are only toe-n-go, they suck. You CAN whack this design out of alignment with a big enough pothole at a high enough speed ...

The bolt is discontinued, but it's also been used on almost ALL Mopar products from the mid 60's up.

RwP
 



Quick Reply: Upper control arm mount



All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:36 PM.