Kframe, engine bay, front suspension questions

I’d use a spray gun on the engine compartment. The smell isn’t going to be that much worse, and the paint will be much better. Plus if you haven’t used a spray gun before the engine compartment is a good place to practice. You need to mask stuff for rattle cans too if you’re going to do it right, but you will need to do a better job of masking for spray.

As for the front end, the K frame has to go in first. Then the lower control arms, leave the pivot bolt nuts loose and leave the adjuster bolts either completely loose or out entirely. If you have non-adjustable strut rods slide them in but don’t tighten anything. If you have adjustable strut rods that use a bolt through the LCA you can leave them out, if you have the kind with a double adjuster (QA1) then slide those in but don’t tighten anything. Really if you want you can install the LCA’s and strut rods on the K before you put it in place, but if you don’t have a nice K frame stand or extra help it just makes the K heavier and lining up the K frame bolts a little more problematic. Then the torsion bars, stock LCA’s should be hanging all the way down to do that.

Once the torsion bars are in you can install the UCA’s and spindles. Really the UCA’s can go in whenever, I leave them out until now because they’re out of the way. Spindles after the torsion bars though. If you have poly bushings you can tighten everything at this point and adjust the adjustable strut rods, with the torsion bar adjusting plates out you can cycle the suspension and check for binding and adjust the length. With rubber bushings you need to put the suspension at ride height before you tighten everything. Shocks can go in afterwards, they can go in before things are fully torqued if you’re going to set it down to determine ride height and torque the nuts with rubber bushings. If you know the position of the suspension at your desired ride height you don’t actually have to put the car on the ground to torque everything, just hold the suspension at that position, say by setting the LCA on an extra jack stand, block, whatever. If you do it that way though you do need to make the position you torque the suspension at the finished ride height, otherwise you can tear those rubber bushings. Steering stuff can go in last, unless of course you’re installing the K with the engine installed on it in which case the steering box should be on it before the engine.

I probably forgot something in there, you can always refer to the FSM especially if you’re using stock parts and rubber bushings. For aftermarket parts and poly bushings some of the FSM stuff doesn’t apply.