LCA repair options...

So, I have a set of '73-'76 swaybar LCAs. Before I knew any better, I welded on the stiffening plates. Now that I know better, I realize that was a huge mistake. I found Jim Lusk's video and one of the LCAs I have appears to be mildly bad, while the other one is at least as bad as the worst one Jim says he's ever seen.

I'd like to save the arms...Is it worth my time/effort to grind the stiffening plates off, then do the repair as shown in Jim's video, or should I just bin this set and find another pair?

Whatever I do, I think I'm going to make my own stiffening plates. I didn't care much for the ones I got from Mancini. They worked fine and all, but my arms had the inset on the side that the plates didn't match up well with. I figure I can just come up with my own pretty easily that will better fit the arms.

[ame]http://youtu.be/Nwes-SP8u4w[/ame]

You have ones with the sway bar tabs on them? Guys sell those for $250 and get it all day long.

I'd just grind the weld off on one side of the stiffening plate, clamp the LCA to get the tolerance the way you want it and re-weld.

Or, you can take it a step further and weld gussets onto the LCA. Just make sure the torsion bar lever clears them through its full range of motion.

Yes, I have swaybar-tabbed LCAs. I'm not sure I can cleanly split one side away. We'll see. Sounds like a good idea, though. I like your extra gusseting of the pivot area.

Cut the plates off and reuse them or make your own. There is no reason for the inner strap if the LCAs come back correct with my method.

Thanks, Jim. I'm gonna give it a whack.

Yeah it depends on how everything lined up when you welded them on. You can lose the outer edge of the stiffening plate though, especially since you'll be pulling the LCA together with the clamp. So you can be a little more aggressive grinding the edge of the plate.

When I was adding the stiffening plates to my LCA's I noticed that while the stiffening plate helps tremendously to hold the tolerance on the pivot arm, it does still allow some spread there. You can check it pretty easily with just a clamp, even with the plates welded in place it doesn't take much clamping force on the LCA ends to bind the pivot arm, and of course the reverse (spread, causing play) would be true as well. I had a set of tubular LCA's on my Challenger for awhile before they broke (the CAP version, not QA1), I noticed they had the pivot arm partially caged in. So I checked the range of motion on the pivot arms, checked the clearance to the K frame and added the extra gusset to keep the LCA from spreading away from the pivot. Just make sure the pivot arm still moves freely when you're finished.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. After first looking at the LCAs and visualizing the range of motion the pivot could possibly run through, I thought that the open area looked pretty unsupported. Guess I'm not crazy after all.