Rebuilding the Front Suspension
Paradise Garage




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© 2000 Brian F. Schreurs
Even we have a disclaimer.

It's no surprise that being suspended is a punishment.
We knew that Col. Mosby, the Paradise Garage 1974 Dodge Adventurer pickup, was not in the best health when we dropped it off for an inspection. We were ready to get failed for quite a few things, but we were caught flatfooted when we were informed that we'd need a coupla ball joints and a coupla tie rods to get the sticker. The tab? $250.

A little shopping soon showed that we could buy an entire front-end rebuild kit for about the same money. All we'd have to do is provide the labor. We bought a set of four Gabriel Gas Ryder LT shock abosorbers (front #13-6564; rear #13-6707) from JC Whitney and a bunch of stuff from Performance Suspension Technology's OE-style line: a front-end rebuild kit (includes the stabilizer bar mount bushing kit, two upper ball joints, two lower ball joints, two outer tie rod ends, four upper control arm bushings, two lower control arm bushings, four control arm bumpers, and a bunch of bushings and links for an anti-roll bar that they swear we have, but we don't), two inner tie rods, and two tie rod adjusting sleeves. PST doesn't provide part numbers.

You'll also need a spring compressor, a pipe wrench, a grease gun, a pickle fork, a 3-lb hammer, and a ball joint removing/installing tool (more on that sucker later), which is a bit pricey locally but rather affordable through Harbor Freight. Also, count on farming out the control arm bushings.

Start with something relatively easy: the rear shock absorbers. If you're going to do the fronts, you might as well keep them a matched set. The truck sits so high off the ground, you might not even need to lift it -- but if you do, just put jackstands under the axle. There's no value in removing the wheels.

Each rear shock absorber is held at both ends. The top end has a bolt that passes through a crossbrace; the bottom end sits on a stud mounted to the axle. Spray them liberally with PB Blaster. You really don't wanna break those studs.

Check out the old, skanky shock absorbers compared to the new, beefy Gabriel units.
It doesn't really matter which end comes apart first. We did the top first; it's a 3/4" nut and a 3/4" bolt. The bottom nut is also 3/4" and includes a washer to squish the shock bushing.

In our case, it seemed a previous owner was not aware that this truck isn't 4WD -- the shock washers were nicely mangled by something much stronger, probably a rock. We ended up cutting one of them with a Dremel to get it off. If you face a similar situation, don't worry about the funny shape of the original washer; any old washer of the proper diameter will work just fine.

Note how utterly lifeless the old shocks are, then pitch them. Bring out the new shocks, which are so strong that they are tied down with a nylon strap.

Attach the shocks at the top, with the strap in place. Don't torque down on the nut yet, but get it reasonably secure. Then, snip the strap, and as the shock expands, direct it to the mounting stud at the bottom. If you're quick, you'll be able to get it on there without a problem.

Now tighten everything up. The top nut should be torqued to 25 ft-lbs and the bottom nut should be 15 ft-lbs.

The front driver-side suspension, with the brakes and hub removed. It's a little dirty.
Ahhhh... wasn't that a nice appetizer? Now it's time for the main course: a full front-end rebuild. You DO have alternate transportation, right?

Drop the rear of the truck, if you raised it for the shocks, and raise the front of the truck. Be sure to support it by the frame rails, because the suspension is coming off!

The entire operation is the same for both sides, so for simplicity's sake, we're going to discuss the driver-side rebuild. We hope that this won't result in a bunch of trucks running around with half-new and half-old suspension. You can handle this, right?

Remove the wheel. The lugnuts are 3/4".

The brakes have to be completely removed -- if your truck needs brake work, now's the time. The caliper is held to the spindle with two 3/4" bolts, and the brake line is 5/8". Be ready for the line and the caliper to dump fluid all over the place when you disconnect them. If you don't already own a set of plugs, you might want to think about buying some.

With the caliper off, the rotor can be removed -- but wait, what's this?! The rotor and hub are all one huge piece! Greeeeeeat. The hub has to come apart too. *sigh*

Pry the dust cap off by whatever means comes handy (a screwdriver worked for us). Underneath that, in the greasy mess, remove the cotter pin (and save it to match it up to a new one later -- never reuse these things), pull off the nut lock (it just lifts off), undo the 1-1/8" hub nut, and remove the washer. Grab the rotor/hub by the rotor and give it a sharp yank; that'll loosen up the outer bearing, making it easy to pull off. Then carefully remove the rotor/hub from the spindle. Behind that, the dust shield is held to the spindle by three 1/2" bolts.

Note the spring pin. If you don't remove this, things get messy.
It might be a good idea to line this stuff up in the proper order.

Next off is the shock absorber. The nut and jam nut on the stem are 9/16", but when you try to remove them, the whole stem will rotate. Fortunately the shocks are made with a provision for this: the top of the stem has two flats, which will fit a 1/4" open-end wrench. Hold the stem with the open-end wrench while removing the jam nut, then the nut. There's also a washer; save all this hardware in case your replacement shock doesn't come with its own.

The shock is held at the bottom by two 1/2" bolts which thread through a bracket (which is part of the shock itself) and into the lower control arm. Remove both of these, but be aware that they are the last things holding the shock in place, so make sure your noggin isn't underneath the shock when you release that last bolt.

Remove the strut bar next. What's that? Well, we wondered that also. Turns out it's that fat steel rod that connects the lower control arm to the frame, just behind the bumper. You always wanted to know what that was, didn't you? Now it comes off.

Speaking of messy...
Undo the behind-the-bumper side first. It's a big fat nut, but WAIT! It's retained by a barely-visible spring pin. Punch out that spring pin first! Then it's safe to remove the 1-1/8" nut. Note: PST didn't bother to include a replacement spring pin or nut, and the 25-year-old stuff probably ought not go back on the truck, so save the parts to be matched up later at an auto parts store. Then, with the nut removed, it's easy enough to pry off the huge bushing washer and the outer bushing.

At the other end, the strut bar is held to the lower control arm with two bolts and nuts. All of them are 3/4". Then lift off the strut bar and wiggle it free of the chassis. Pry off the inner bushing.

Now the steering knuckle has to come off. To do this, you've got to break the ball joints free. To do that, you need a picke fork and a big hammer. It really makes a difference; our regular hammer was barely able to pound it off, so we bought a 3-lb. hammer and had a really easy time of it.

To get the lower ball joint off, start by removing the cotter pin in the ball joint's castle nut. Then loosen the 1" castle nut until it is lined up with the top of the stud. Don't remove it just yet. Turn the steering wheel so that the steering is at full-left lock. Wedge the pickle fork between the ball joint and the steering knuckle as best you can, then start pounding away. This is no place for delicacy. Beat the crap out of it.

The lower ball joint has been freed from the steering knuckle, but the spring and upper ball joint are still in place.
When you finally start beating on it hard enough, the ball joint will rather suddenly pop free. When that happens, remove the castle nut.

Before continuing with the steering knuckle, it's a good idea to take care of that troublesome coil spring. That thing is major powerful so a little caution is in order. You MUST use a spring compressor for this operation!

Compress the coil spring just a little -- basically, work the spring compressor just a nudge past hand-tight. The goal here is not to compress the spring, but rather to ensure that it doesn't decompress quite suddenly.

Once you feel confident that the spring is staying put, push down on the lower control arm. Keep pushing until you can twist the spring out from its perch. If the spring looks like it's slipping, stop to tighten the compressor. There's a steel spacer on top of the spring; it's not attached to anything, so keep track of it.

Once that spring is safely out of the way, you can get back to the steering knuckle. The next item to remove is the tie rod. It's held by a 3/4" castle nut and a cotter pin. Remove both, then use the pickle fork and hammer to separate the tie rod from the knuckle. It should be easy compared to the ball joint.

While you're messing with the tie rod, do the same thing to the other side of the tie rod and take it off the truck. Leave it assembled and set it aside. You'll be referencing it later.

Using the ball joint tool to press out the upper ball joint.
Now disconnect the steering knuckle from the upper ball joint in exactly the same manner as the lower. It'll be a little harder to work with, since the knuckle can now spin freely, but it'll come loose. It is especially important to leave the ball joint's castle nut partly threaded on, as it'll be the only thing keeping the knuckle from crashing to the floor.

With the steering knuckle removed, it's now possible to do the ball joints! It's easier to remove them while the control arms are still on the truck because you don't have to worry about holding the control arm along with everything else. So go grab a big ol' C-clamp just like the guys at PST told you...

...and throw it at something to take out your frustration, because there's no way nohow that any C-clamp is gonna remove a stubborn ball joint. Forget about it right now. We dunno what they're smoking up there in PSTland but they need to export some of it to Virginia, coz it's good stuff. You might as well count on, and plan for, buying a ball joint remover/installer tool, a fact that we REALLY wish PST had been upfront about. Had they been, we could have bought one on the cheap from Harbor Freight; since we didn't know that we'd need one until the last second, we paid major bucks for one through the local Cornwell guy.

The remover/installer tool that we got actually looks sorta like a C-clamp, except that it's far beefier and is obviously specialized to the task. It has a set of adapters; some are pushers, some are catchers. The basic idea is to select the right catcher, then push the ball joint into it.

The lower ball joint can come out first -- it's easier. It comes out through the bottom. This job is rather messy but not really too hard, with the right equipment. Don't be afraid to apply lots of force: it can take it.

Here's the upper control arm before we started ripping everything apart.
The upper ball joint comes out through the top. But there's a catch; it's threaded. Good luck getting it to unscrew. It proved impossible for us, so we had to press it out just like the lower ball joint. No, this is probably not so good for the control arm, but we were faced with no other option.

Next off is the lower control arm. It's held to the frame by one 15/16" bolt and its corresponding nut, also 15/16". With the bolt removed, you can wiggle the control arm out. Easy.

The upper control arm is nowhere near as easy, and the service manuals are worthless, simply saying to remove them. Uh, thanks guys. We knew that part. The arm is held to the frame by two eccentric bolts. Those offset washers under the bolt heads aren't washers at all -- they're part of the bolt! If you try to undo these bolts from the bolt side, you'll wipe out the eccentric keepers, which is a Bad Thing. They control your alignment.

To get these off with a minimum amount of damage, start by putting alignment marks on the eccentrics and the keepers. They must go back on the same way they came off. Then, hold the bolt side while loosening the nut side. It doesn't look possible to get at the nuts, but it is; you might try going down from the engine bay, but we managed to do it all from underneath.

Matchmark the eccentric bolt in its keeper so that you can get the alignment back to sorta close.
Under the nut, there's a lock washer and an eccentric washer. All of this stuff has to be reused, so put them somewhere safe. Then, wiggle the upper control arm off the truck.

There are two rubber bumpers: a big one on the spring perch, and a small one on the upper control arm. Each is held by one 9/16" nut. Remove them but save the nuts.

Clean the control arms. Clean them well. Particularly where the ball joints go.

If you think you can remove and replace the control arm bushings, be our guest. After trying a few tricks, we decided that discretion was the better part of valor and trotted them off to be professionally R&R'd by Tom Frost Firestone. They did an excellent job, charged a reasonable fee, and they obviously worked so hard to do it that we were doubly glad to have paid them rather than deal with it ourselves.

For the rest of the suspension, installation is the reverse of removal.

Ha ha ha! We never get tired of that joke. Since you're such sports, we'll provide some notes about installing the new stuff.

Old vs. new upper control arm bushings.
The driver-side front suspension stripped bare.
Back at the garage, install the new ball joints. We found these to be easier to install on the bench rather than on the truck; your mileage may vary. The lower ball joint goes on in exactly the opposite way that it came off and is no big deal.

The upper ball joint, remember, is threaded. So is the replacement. In our case, we found that the new ball joint was perfecly willing to thread back into the upper control arm, despite the rather brutal tactics necessary to remove its predecessor. It's a very tight fit, though, and the only way we could get it all the way in was with a huge pipe wrench.

Each ball joint has a corresponding rubber boot that pushes over the joint. Look at it carefully and you'll see that it has a notch in it; that notch must go on the inside. It's a tight fit; the service manual says that you can push it on with a 2-1/4" socket, but we found that the service manual must have been written on a planet where they don't really know how to measure the diameter of a circle. There was no way that socket was going to fit over the ball joint. Instead, we used one of the adapters from the ball joint remover tool.

Install the two new bumpers. Either buy new nuts or reuse the old ones; PST didn't bother providing replacements for them. One of our bumpers was coated in rubber and had to be cleaned with a die before the nut would thread; if you don't happen to have a tap & die set, this could be a real problem for you.

The lower control arm goes back on pretty easily. No big deal.

The upper control arm, however, is a real joy. One look showed what our odds were of getting it back on without a hassle: zero. The control arm (also known as the A-arm because of its striking resemblance to the letter A) apparently is under a bit of tension, and removing it caused it to relax and spread like a fat guy watching The Price Is Right. We pondered this situation for a while, finally decided that we could hardly make it any worse -- after all, it already wasn't going to fit -- and took a hammer to the A-arm brackets. A few well-placed blows later and the A-arm fit perfectly.

If you haven't figured it out by now, this project is hardly an exercise in delicacy.

Be sure to put the eccentric bolt together in the right order (bolt; A-arm; washer; lock washer; nut) and line up the marks you made earlier. Your alignment is going to be way off no matter what, but this will help to at least keep the thing driveable.

Lower (left) and upper (right) control arms with bumpers, bushings, and ball joints installed.
Put the spring back in. To do this, set the spacer ring on top of the spring and wedge the spring into its perch. Then get the steering knuckle ready; lift the lower control arm with a floor jack so that the ball joint will attach to the knuckle. Then reinstall the steering knuckle. It simply bolts onto the two ball joints. Don't forget to use new cotter pins on the castle nuts.

Next, assemble the tie rod. This will require two tie rod ends (one reverse-thread) and a tie rod sleeve. Basically, take the old tie rod, lay it out, and build the new one to match. The reverse-thread tie rod end is the outer one. To make sure the lengths are the same, count the number of visible threads on the old tie rod ends and make sure the same number of threads are visible on the new ones after assembly. This won't get you a perfect alignment, not even close really, but it'll be good enough to get to the alignment shop.

Once the tie rod is assembled, attach it to the center link and the steering knuckle. Be sure that each tie rod end has a dust boot covering it. Then tighten down the tie rod sleeve. That's a piece you don't want coming loose. PST provides new castle nuts and cotter pins; use them.

Now for the strut bar. Hahahahahaha. Actually, there's a trick to it that makes it not so bad.

First, replace the strut bar bushings on the front end. You already got one of 'em off when you removed the bar. The other one will likely need to be pried off, but it will come off. Notice how much thinner the old crunched bushing is compared to the nice new one. Yeah, it's gonna cause a problem. Put one of the new bushings onto the shaft.

The control arms installed.
Insert the front of the bar into its mounting bracket, then bolt down the back end to the lower control arm. Now, on the front of the strut bar, try to put the outer bushing, washer, and nut back on. Not possible, is it?

Well, actually, it is possible. Put a floor jack under the lower control arm and lift it to the point where the suspension reaches equilibrium and you start lifting the whole truck. Then, have your ever-handy assistant sit on the truck's fender and lift the suspension some more, until you once again hit equilibrium. If your assistant weighs at least 140 pounds, this suspension compression should have pushed the strut bar far enough forward that you can now thread the nut. With the nut threaded, it's a simple matter of tightening it down to where you can install a new spring pin. PST provides the bushings and the huge dish-shaped washer, but they don't provide a new nut or spring pin. After all this trouble, we weren't going to reuse old hardware here; we replaced it all with shiny new components.

Compared to that, installing the new shock absorber is a breeze. Put one bushing on its upper mount, then poke it up through the lower control arm and the spring so that its shaft protrudes through its upper mount. On the top, put on the second bushing, a washer, and a nut or two (depending on what ya got). On the bottom, reuse the two old bolts and bolt it to the lower control arm. This isn't quite as easy as it sounds, what with the new shock's strength and all, but with some practice and maybe a floor jack, you'll get the hang of it.

Then, tighten down the top of the shock until the bushings compress to the width of the washer.

Now, before you forget, go back and install the various grease fittings, also known as zerk fittings, or just zerks. Each ball joint and each tie rod end has a zerk. The upper ball joint zerk is 3/8" and the rest are 5/16". On ours, some were self-tapping and some were not; if yours are the same, be sure that the self-tapping zerks go on the parts that don't have any threads (for us it was the inner tie rods). The self-tapping ones will fit into a threaded hole, but the non-tapping ones will not go into a non-threaded hole. And they look nearly identical. Fun, fun. For reasons known only to Martians, the upper ball joint got a 90-degree zerk on our truck, whereas the balance are all straight.

That about does it for the suspension. Now to reassemble the hub and the brakes!

Prepare the spindle by thoroughly cleaning it. Then reattach the dust shield. Then clean it again. Then smear the spindle with wheel bearing grease. Get some fresh grease into the hub, too, especially on and around the inner wheel bearing. And grease up the outer wheel bearing really well, in preparation for its pending installation.

Old and new tie rods.
Gently put the rotor/hub unit onto the spindle. Then slide the outer wheel bearing on, followed by the washer. Thread the nut and tighten it down about a half-turn past hand-tight while spinning the rotor/hub. This helps to seat the wheel bearing. Then loosen the nut and retighten it to hand-tight. Place the nut lock over it, install a new cotter pin, and press the dust cover back on.

If the brake pads need to be replaced, now's an awful good time to do it.

Reattach the caliper to the steering knuckle. Ohhh, forgot which hole the larger bolt goes into? Heh heh. That's okay, it's been a really long day for you. It goes in the bottom one.

Get out the ol' grease gun and hit up all the grease fittings on the chassis. Might as well do the joints you didn't replace; odds are, no one else has greased them in a long time either.

Hmm... wait... what's this? No more parts sitting around?! You're actually done! Congratulations! Put the wheel back on and hobble on over to the alignment shop.

Despite our best efforts, the alignment was way off, which just goes to show how important it is to make the test drive coincide with the route to your favorite alignment shop. But, with all the new parts installed, it had no trouble passing a state inspection. And, best of all, a lot of the steering slop is gone! Plus, the new shocks help the truck corner better and bounce less, resulting in a much more pleasant ride. We're very pleased with the results of this rebuild. The only thing we're not pleased about is PST, who don't provide instructions and who seem to think that you can remove ball joints with a C-clamp. The parts are quality, but the service is suspect. Just listen to us, not them, when you go tool shopping and you'll be okay.