Adjustable Upper Link Arms
Joe Angell
Long ago, I installed lower adjustable control arms, allowing the camber of the rear wheels to be adjusted. Normally the only adjustment is the toe-in, which is done by changing the number of shims on the trailing arm. That only adjusts one axis, which means that if your rear wheels aren’t aligned, there might not be much you can do about it.
The last time I got an alignment, the shop said the only way to get proper toe-in was to push the lower link arms WAY out. They called this “functional camber”, but it would still cause uneven tire wear, and it’s not really the look I’m going for.
The shop also said that adjustable upper link arms might fix the problem. This doesn’t seem like it would matter, but the reality is that each of these adjustment don’t work in a single plane, and often one will put the other two axes out of alignment. This gives us a third degree of freedom to play with.
Tightening the adjustment on the adjustable lower link arm.
About how far out the shop said I’d have to adjust the camber to get proper toe-in.
New Link Arms
I got the adjustable “top link” stainless steel arms from DeLorean Industries. These are very nicely built, with high-quality welds on polished stainless steel. The center of the turnbuckle is black-painted steel.
The old link arms were fine, by the way. They’re just not adjustable.
An old arm (back) and a new adjustable stainless steel arm (front>
Getting the Old Arms Out
As with the lower link arms, getting the uppers out was not fun. The uppers are further complicated by the body of the car being much closer to the arms. This significantly limits how much you can swing a hammer to get the bolts out.
Passenger Side
The trick with the passenger side carrier is that it’s not available anymore. if you break it, you’ll have to source a used one from somewhere. I had replaced mine about 20 years ago, and it was still in good shape.
I loaded it up with penetrant and gave the pivot bolt a turn with a cheater bar. Thankfully, it moved, but I couldn’t get it to shift with a hammer.
Failed attempts at hammering. The body’s just too close to get a proper swing.
Heat from a MAP torch seemed to have no effect either.
I tried an electric auto-hammer, but it’s a very basic model, and didn’t do anything. It’s more for finish nails than actually doing anything. I should have gotten a higher-end one, although I’m not sure even that would have helped.
I gave my weak impact wrench a try, but it did nothing. It’s more suited to removing lug nuts than bolts — it’s a pretty basic model. The bolt was really stuck in there.
Galvanic corrosion seemed like a possibility, but the steel bolt doesn’t go directly into the aluminum carrier. Instead, it rides on steel bushings inside the carrier, so the bolt shouldn’t be corroded in place.
I was able to remove the bolt on the frame side, at least. Quite easily, even. This is the one I was more worried about, because this is directly threaded into the frame with very little space around it, and I’m not entirely sure how I’d have gotten it out without removing the body.
This bolt was easy, at least.
In the end, I removed the carrier from the car. This meant removing an additional 11 bolts that I didn’t need to otherwise remove.
I then tried using my press to force the bolt out. This did nothing, mostly because I couldn’t find a good way place to rest the carrier so that it was stable while also allowing the bolt to fall out.
Failing to press out the bolt.
I finally just put it down on the bench and hit it with the mini-sledge. After a few minutes, I got it flush, and switched to hammering on it with another bolt until it finally dropped out of the carrier.
Thankfully I didn’t damage the carrier getting the bolt out.
The final bit of hammering on the bench.
Driver’s Side
The driver’s side was even more of a pain. Again the frame-side bolt came out easily enough, but after 20 minutes of short hammer swings on the pivot bolt, I did what I probably should have done a long time ago: I bought a better impact gun.
The old gun advertised 220 ft lbs of torque. The new one claims nearly 1200 ft lbs, and specifically refers to it as break-away torque. That might just be marketing speak, but it was worth a shot.
The new, more powerful impact wrench had no trouble turning the seemingly seized bolt.
The new gun easily turned the seized bolt. It wasn’t even a contest. After spinning it a bit, I could hit it with the sledge and shift it a few inches. When it got stuck again, I’d turn it with the gun and go back to hitting it with a hammer.
I didn’t even have to use the sledge — the brass hammer was fine, once the new impact gun broke it loose.
I think the impact wrench was heating up the bolt as it turned, and as long as it was hot I could hammer it along the carrier. Once it cooled down a bit, it would seize again and needed to be turned again.
This was working great until I had about 4 inches left. The problem is that I ran out of room — I couldn’t fit the gun between the body and the bolt. So I resorted to removing the entire carrier on this side too.
The clearance to the body finally caught up with me, and I had to remove the carrier.
Once I had it on the bench, I turned it with the impact wrench, and a few good hits with the hammer and it dropped right out.
One last turn with the impact wrench on the bench before finally tapping it out.
The moral of the story is to just buy a strong impact wrench.
I also managed to break one of my socket wrenches when I was using the cheater bar on it. Which is why breaker bars exist, but whatever. I have more wrenches.
Installation
Putting these back in the car was simple enough. I had a little trouble getting the new arm on the frame on the driver’s side, but overall it was pretty easy. I used lots of anti-seize to hopefully keep things from getting too corroded again, in case I ever had to take this apart in the future.
The upper link arm installed in the carrier as the lower pivot bolt is installed.
Alignment
Back at the alignment shop, they were able to use the new link arms to correctly set the rear alignment. I had also tweaked the ride height a little, so they redid the front alignment too.
This is probably the first time this car has been completely properly aligned, ever.
Getting up on the lift at the alignment shop.
Driving
I didn't notice much of a change when driving, right up until I hit some heavy rain. Over the last few months I noticed this unsettling shifting feeling from the rear on wet roads. That's completely gone now -- the car feels absolutely solid. I do have new rear tires, which certainly helped, but I'd been driving on those for over a month before I did the link arms, so I think it's the alignment that really made the difference.