Technical A Kid's First Project: 1957 Fairlane 500 Town Victoria.

Doing nothing works until they start squeaking. Best lube for those control arm bushings is Johnson's Liquid Floor Wax. Put it in a little pump oiler with a spout and shoot it on the bushing. Keeps the squeaks out. Worked on several hundred cars I lubed in a gas station and didn't destroy the rubber. Make sure that the lower bushing gets pressed all the way into the control arm or it will be very hard to get the arm back into the mounts. Don't move the eccentrics on the lower control arm mounts until you get everything installed and then take it to an alignment shop. Summit has the uppers (Mevotech # MS404122, $ 29.99 each) and lowers (Dorman # DPC-BC850535PR, $33.99 each).

 

oh, thank you for explaining, i read something about people drilling holes to grease them, glad i brought that up here beforehand so i didnt make a mistake!

(top pic isnt mine but i dont have a picture of exactly what im referring to)
these are what i was referring to, i guess i see why there arent any grease zirks (maybe its zerk?)

 

Yea, no grease there. It would only deteriorate the rubber. And it is zerk do you know why? Because the guy who invented them his last name is Zerk. Forgot his first name though. Look it up.

 

good to know, and the inventor is Oscar U Zerk. the ball joints on mine are luckily perfectly okay, i do need to install steering bump stops however, as mine fell off. im looking at 170ish in parts total? not bad.

 

Ok, see those shims between the frame mounts and the bar that the bushings go on. Take pictures of yours before you disassemble them and make sure you put the same number back in each place. Those control your camber. The eccentrics on the bottom front control your caster. DO NOT MOVE THOSE. Let the alignment shop do it. You're probably going to need new bushings on the sway bar and new sway bar links and rubbers that go from the bar to the lower control arm.

 

oh, forgot about those luckily my car is weird and only has 4 sway bar bushings, no end links. shouldnt be more than 30 bucks

 

I had a temporary brain fart. Your Ford has those two bushings on the front inside of the control arm that the sway bar attaches to. Not bolts on each end with rubber grommets. My bad.

 

honestly i dont know how these are even aligned. is it really just the shims?
also '57 t birds got a normal sway bar like what youre referring to. i believe 56 does the same @Jeff Norwell upgraded his to a much larger sway bar so it doesnt lean around turns.

 

The shims control camber, that's how much the tires lean in or out at the top. When I was racing '57 Fords which have basically the same upper control arms as your '59, I couldn't get all the camber needed to get the right front tire to roll into the banking on the track because, with all those shims removed, it just wasn't enough. The solution was to cut the top right control arm through the middle from front to back and shorten it about 3/4 of an inch. That gave me what I needed, and I could still fine tune the suspension with the shims. Those eccentrics on the bottom control arms control the angle of the spindle front to rear, the caster. Here's a suggestion, buy yourself a Motors Manual for 1959. You'll find a lot of answers and specs in those. Chilton manuals are good too. You can find them on Ebay from $19.00 to $45.00 or check here on the HAMB in the Antiquated classifieds. Someone has one.

 

wait i have a 57, so theres no eccentrics anywhere in the upper suspension? i should read the alignment part of my '57 ford shop manual, should have good info

 

1/4-28 to be exact. The upper arm bushings are not tapped from the factory. There was an ancient hack on older unibody Fords where they would torch holes in the shock towers to allow access. Nice...

The upper arm bushings are tricky on Fords 1957-1964. The bushings have 2 threads on them, a coarse one where they go onto the shaft and a fine one where they thread into the arm itself.

The shaft has to be centered on the arm, or it throws off the caster adjustment. I scribe a witness line on the arm and shaft while they are still assembled. From there it is a little balancing act to get the 2 marks to be close again. Take care not to strip the arm threads out. I use never-seize on the them.

Before doing my car in 2014, the last set I had done was on a '64 Ford around 1979.

 

The upper arms control camber and caster. Unlike later GM cars, you add shims to make the camber more positive. Caster moves the same way, eyeball the arm and visualize it. Usually I got away with 1/16" and 1/8" shims on any similar Ford I aligned. This one took a 1/32" shim to get the caster spread right. Toe is conventional. The order is camber/caster, then toe.

You can jockey the shims back and forth on the same side to adjust caster and not disturb the camber. This only works on symmetrical arms. So I tackle the camber first and take readings on the caster.

Some notes on lower control arm bushings, if you replace them, take notice on which direction they go in from. They go in from the inside of the arm, not the outside like later GM cars. Take a few pictures before.

Once the arm goes back on, do not fully tighten them while they are hanging, the bushings will tear. Don't ask me how I know this... Putting the car on ramps is the best way to fully tighten them, or a drive-on rack if you have shop access.

 

so what if i put jack stands under the A arms after i install them? would that work?

so wire brush them and paint pen a line, got it. do you have any pictures from when you did your suspension?

 

while im in there, i should probably replace my leaf spring bushings aswell. how hard is that?

 

i underestimated the price, i have inner and outer tie rod ends (im assuming i can reuse the sleeve as people want entirely too much for whats essentially just stamped steel) i found swaybar bushings for 20 bucks, and suspension bushings for 90 (the actual cheapest ive found), i found Ford NOS inner tie rod ends for 90 aswell, and MOOG outer for 25 a piece. im looking at about 280 in parts, still cheaper than one of the kits. while its up on jacks i'll replace the axle seals on the side as they started to leave a small amount of grease on the rear wheels. might also do bearings so i wont need to touch it again.

 

Consider doing one end at a time. The front grease seals, check spring height since they are 66 years old (lower?), adjust, drain and refill the steering box (seals?) and lube steering shaft bushings. Most of this is skipped during a mild refresh, but you can do most of this with little money and have a really fresh front end.

 

the steering box really needs drained, flushed somehow, and then refilled, im thinking good ol atf to flush out the ancient gear oil. but i definitely will look at that once its out, the total after shipping is over 300.

 

Definitely re-pack the bearings, inner and outer and replace the seals. Cheap insurance.

 

luckily i just did that last summer when i did the brakes, the tire shop did say i need to tighten up my drivers side wheel bearing a little, so i'll grab my inch pound torque wrench and set it to 14 thousandths preload.

 

My bad again, I mistakenly thought you had a '59. You are correct that there are no eccentrics on your 1957 car. On a '59 they would be on the lower control arms. @bobss396 is telling you straight about controlling caster and camber from the shims on the upper control arms and everything else he said in post # 1392. Again, my apologies, my only explanation is that I'm a really old guy .

 

when i get it aligned i'll ask to watch them align it (some shops will let you if they know you work on your own stuff), im more of a visual learner less than reading, i cant really see what its doing.

 

How is this? Note that this is typical later stuff, yours is arm outside frame.


BTW, the box may be a recirculating ball, so read up and look at pics before you take it apart! They are like watches, lots of little bits inside.

 

OHH now i get it. so you can add shims to individual studs to increase or decrease the castor, and camber is when you add shims to both?

 

That has B add shims to reduce, which is wrong. Adding shims would also move the ball joint back, increasing per the figure.
Yes, however since your arm is outside, adding shims to both would move ball joint out, not in.

 

This is how your upper arm should look. I'm close on the upper limit on how thick Ford says the shim packs should be at 5/8". This is different from later GM products, see how the arm moves to control caster and camber. Make some cave sketches, I used to do that when I started alignments in 1975.

 

Your Ford moves opposite of what this shows. Shims (+/-) control BOTH caster and camber. If you add or subtract equally, the caster stays the same since the arm is symmetrical.

I always start out with getting the camber where it should be. Then take caster readings. Do take note of how many shims are at each location since you are new at this. If the car has no pull, just work the camber. This is a short cut, I used to take caster readings regardless. Experience taught me that the caster will likely be close to specs, unless the shim packs were quite lopsided. The road test before and after was essential.

Study to see how the arm moves in regards to caster. Cars will pull to the side with the "leading" upper ball joint. Looking at the car from the side gives you an idea of how this works. If it pulls to the right for example, you need to get the top of the spindle to lean back a little more.

You can change the caster and not impact the camber, you simply add what you take out at one location and put it in at the other location. I used to do this off the rack successfully most of the time, unless the shim pack gets dropped. After doing that ONCE, I used duct seal to hold them together.

As far as using jack stands to compress the suspension, I haven't tried it. I thing you need more weight on the suspension. I used to do them on the alignment rack. If your bushings look good leave them alone for now. A bit dried out is okay, pieces missing of the liner showing is not. The lower arm kit comes with new bolts, they are specific to the car.

 

Hold the phone... on the bottom photo, this is not a set of factory 1957-1964 upper control arm bushings. It is quite possibly a retro-fit kit. Moog used to make them for the older Falcons and Mustangs, they were great labor savers. I never saw one for the big Fords, which doesn't mean they still make them.

The kits I used came with a new shaft, factory bushings will not work with the shaft in the picture.

 

This is the bigger sway bar I installed in 2017.

 

i'll snap some more pics of a different angle. the rubber bushings are almost completely gone