s-10 ball joint any body got them figured out yet

[NixVegaGT]

Wow that is sweet, Ray. You are a real man of action! I didn't get a chance to check the thread last night and a whole LOT happened! I kinda wish I'd done what you just did when I was fabricating my LCAs.

OK the answer is don't move the upper… Well you might want to move it rearward a little, if you can, for more caster but not in or out for camber adjustment.

When I put the picture of what I did with the uppers I was afraid it would confuse what I was trying to say. I wanted to illustrate that when fitting the upper BJ into the UCA to try to keep it more proximal to where the stock BJ location is.

I really like the idea of boxing the arms now that you've replaced the BJ sleeve.

[peterpan]

ok i haven't got a chance to get anywhere today i had a running 91 blazer and a 454 given to me that i had to go pick up so that has taken most of my day so far

but i am going to stuff my face full of food and go try to tackle the upper ball joint now that question has been answered

[res0o7eb]

Ray,

I looked at the pics of your lower A-Arms on page 2 of this thread.
I didn't see any evidence of any welding.
It looks like you just cleaned and painted the ends of them with some gloss black paint.
You are either a big, fat liar or this is another one of your April Fools jokes.




Excellent fabrication and welding. Of course, we expect nothing less from you, Ray.

[Caveman]

Not only did I box it but we added this.
Hope that helps.

[peterpan]

no its not a fools joke

thanks

i put some filler welds in to help smooth out the lines the ground them down
i was going for the unmodified look i can still see some of the welds
i'm thinking about putting a little bit of bondo on them to completly hide the cut lines and smooth out the lines but i'm not sure if i will or not its not my 72 so i shouldn't be that picky with it

in these pictures i marked the cut line with red




john
that bar you added would really help to reinforce it if someone was to only weld the ring for the ball joint in the a arm did you weld that to the ring or just the arm part

[Caveman]

I did a complete fill you can kind of see it in this picture.

[70styleVega]

PeterPan.... I'm going to be this watching closely.
When Nick and I talked about an " S10 parts only" upgrade he had already done a swap, which lead him to suggest moving the LBJ inward a quarter of an inch. I have yet to do the swap (I'm currently installing my drivetrain), so I'm curious as to how Nick's suggestion works out. After I have my drivetrain in and headers mounted, a front end rebuild is next. I thought it might be easier to do with the motor in.

By the way, both you and Caveman have done some nice welding!

[peterpan]

i don't know how long it will take me to get the a arms and s-10 stuff on the car and get it aligned but i plan to finish up the lower arms and hopefully get the uppers done this week end

but i just got another truck that i need to part out and some others are on that list as well so i will be very busy

the ball joint swap will be my bad weather plan

[peterpan]

i got one side upper and lower done i ran out of gas for my welder so i had to use flux core wire and it is way harder to make the welds look good but its done

between the splatter from the flux core and the a arms being filthy they look like crap but they are strong and ready to go on the car

i boxed around the joint between the two peices

[BillPappy]

Dude I really like the work your doing to the
72 vega Please Don't tell me you stuck them
A arms back on with out at lest running a wire bruch over them and fresh paint.

[peterpan]

thanks

but these converted a arms are for a totally different car than the vega in the picture it has bobs adapters and all its parts have been sand blasted and painted to look pretty

these converted arms will be going on my 78 starfire that i'm putting together just to save the car then once its running it goes up for sale

[waybad]

[quote="peterpan"]thanks

but these converted a arms are for a totally different car than the vega in the picture it has bobs adapters and all its parts have been sand blasted and painted to look pretty :lol:

these converted arms will be going on my 78 starfire that i'm putting together just to save the car then once its running it goes up for sale[/quote]\


How did the 72 turn out? did you like the way the upper and lowers fit in the vega?
Do you think that it would be possible to move the control arms inward, to narrow the
front track width maybe a inch or so??? I will be doing this bj swap like you if yours
turned out good, but I would also like to move them inward a little so my front
tires are tucked a little? Thanks for your time TC

[peterpan]

i have not finished the 72 that is painted nice or installed the s-10 modified arms on the starfire yet

the 72 with stock vega upper balljoints and arms with 76 monza deep pocket lower a arms v8 spings and stock lower ball joint with bobs adapters seems to of worked really good but i have not finished it yet and never had it alligned yet

i'm not sure if the ball joints could be moved in to narrow track width or not or what other problems it could cause

[NixVegaGT]

I just got another PM question about this subject again. I've probably already put a post in for this in this thread but it can't hurt to put it in here again:

You can use the adapter sleeves to mount the S10 spindles but there is a potential for extra neg. camber. The problem comes from a difference in the location of the LBJ mount on the S10 spindle. The LBJ mount on the S10 spindle is 1/4" offset FROM the spindle. This moves the bottom of the spindle outward by 1/4" causing an increase in neg. camber. This is fine for a road racing car but not so good for a drag car. I know a lot of guys have successfully used these with out any problems. I'm not a big fan of them but I'm working on a road racing chassis and I like the extra beef in the S10 spindles. For a drag car that will not see many corners the adapters should be fine. The other problem is that the h-body ball joints are slowly disappearing and they are getting really expensive. The S10 BJs are plentiful and will be for a long time.

That brings us to S10 BJ swaps. There are a couple factors to consider when deciding whether to go with the S10 BJs or not. The swap to S10 ball joints has some complications. There is no prefab LCA for the S10 ball joints so you have to fabricate your own solution. I cut out some s10 sleeves from a couple junk LCAs. THat was a lot of work. You can buy weld in sleeves for the Vega LCAs from UB Machine:

http://www.ubmachine.com/

When you mount the sleeves they need to be welded 1/4" inward to account for the camber issue. You can modify the UCA for s10 ball joints. I tried this. The problem is you need to mount the BJ as far out and back as you can put it and still mount it. The reason for this is that the stock UCAs put the caster pretty close to zero. That's a problem in a drag car. That is compounded if the rear of the car is higher than the front. It may even put the caster into the neg. area and that's a dangerous place to be for drag racing… well for anything in my opinion.

That brings us to the adjustable UCAs. Not a cheap solution but I think they are totally necessary for motorsports applications. This way you can adjust for camber and caster at the track then put it back to more streetable settings when you leave. It is possible to get extra neg. camber by using the stock UCAs but you can't get the extra safer caster. Built in extra pos. caster makes driving on the street a little harder especially if you have manual steering. If you get some of Chuck's adjustable UCAs, just be sure he's checked the parts. I had one of the sleeves that didn't have the hole drilled all the way through. I had to drill it out myself. No big deal but it took me a minute to figure out what the problem was. LOL!

They are relatively inexpensive compared to custom fabrication and pretty easy to install. Good stuff. Thanks Chuck.

[NixVegaGT]

OK I take it back. Here's a thread with fabricated lowers:

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=24338&view=unread#unread

It is still a custom fab piece but it is likely they have a rig now. Interesting.