Wild ride

[drabo]

Just thought I would share this with ya'll. Driving to work this morning I snapped the lower control arm U-bolt. It caused the tire to go 45degrees under the truck and nearly sent the whole truck into a very large ditch. You could say I had the pucker factor going on. Needless to say I'm getting 4 new U-bolts to avoide a return trip.

 

[Vin63]

Phew! Glad to hear your were able to save it. Yep, I have four new U-bolts ready for when I do my final assembly on my front end just for that reason.

 

[dvalentine]

Congrats on saving it, and your butt !!

At some point, "someone" realized that those factory u-bolts were not stout enough. Replacements are now thicker and will require a drill to ream out a bit...

Val

 

[drabo]

Good point. I'll make sure to get larger diameter ones. I did notice that you can't get grade 8 U-bolts in the factory size only grade 5.

 

[66 KUSTOM]

i replaced all mine with 3/4 ton truck ubolts, like dval said, you have to drill the holes out bigger. what happend to you is exactly what happend to the previouse owner of my 66, he bought the bigger ujoints and i put them in when i picked up the truck.

 

[62 short step]

Wow!! Glad you saved it!

 

[drabo]

I tore down the upper and lower control arms. I took them and bead blasted and repainted them. I probably knocked off 20lbs in crud. At least it will look good with the wheel off. I'll try and post pictures when it's done.