Are aftermarket A body upper control arms worth it ?

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Brooks James

Brooks James

VET, CPT, Huey Medevac Pilot
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At seems that the Biggest advantage for aftermarket ones is more caster, thus making the cars able to accepted Modern tires. I already have the offset Moog Upper control arm bushings. Gas Bilsteins, 1 1/4 inch sway bar, rear stabilizer bar on the rear, new manual steering box, Ss Springs., rear disc brakes. Im thinking that my money would be better spent elsewhere, like really Good tires ?
What do you think ?

Arm
 
What do you actually have for caster now? And what tires are you going to run?

Usually with the offset UCA bushings about the best you can do for caster is +3.5*. Which might be fine depending on your tire choices, like if you’re gonna run 225/60/15 BFG’s or Coopers that’s fine.

If you’re going to 17/18 rims with wider tires than 225 you may want more caster too, the wider the front tires the more tendency they have to track ruts and things and more caster helps a lot.

If you have manual steering there also may be a number you don’t want to go past, the more positive caster you have the more stable the car is- but that also means more resistance to turning. So, more steering effort.

I run 275/35/18’s up front and have run everything from +3.5* caster all the way up to +8*. For me I’ve determined +6.5* is the happy medium, below that the 275’s start to go where they want. And above that it starts getting exponentially harder to steer. I still run a 16:1 manual steering box though.

So if the plan is to run really wide front tires, you’re probably going to want adjustable UCA’s too. If you’re not going wider than 225 or so then the offset bushings and stock UCA’s will probably be enough, as long as you find you can get at least +3* of caster or so.
 
Always love reading your posts @72bluNblu. I'm basing a lot of my '68 Barracuda build on your info and guess I need to add aftermarket upper control arms now!
 
I’ve got over 3.5 with offset bushings.

my camber was .5 to 75 degrees though. So that helped. And I shaved my rear poly strut bushing 5/16”
 
autoxcuda said:
I’ve got over 3.5 with offset bushings.

my camber was .5 to 75 degrees though. So that helped. And I shaved my rear poly strut bushing 5/16”
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Oh totally, that’s just kinda the average I’ve seen between my own cars and cars people have posted about or I’ve talked to. I’ve heard of people barely being able to get +3 with them and I’ve heard of people getting all the way to +4.5* or so with them.

Like anything suspension related on these cars it depends on your ride height and the other components you’ve got.

So my rule of thumb is just if you can live with around +3.5* then offset bushings should be fine. If you want too much more than that then you should probably look into tubular UCA’s. And if you’re looking to go past about +5.5* you need adjustable tubular control arms, the non-adjustables I’ve seen don’t have more than that built in.

I did have a set of non adjustable tubular UCA’s that also had offset bushings installed into them on my Duster, those were the ones I got to +8* caster inadvertently. I didn’t think they would go that high! And I have the SPC’s from Bergman Autocraft on there now, they’re great.
 
Super Stock rear springs? How high is the rear compared to the front? Every degree of nose down "rake" is a degree of caster lost. Not saying you should go "Carolina squat" or anything silly. But SS springs typically have a lot of loaded camber (arch) and raise the rear
 
C130 Chief said:
Super Stock rear springs? How high is the rear compared to the front? Every degree of nose down "rake" is a degree of caster lost. Not saying you should go "Carolina squat" or anything silly. But SS springs typically have a lot of loaded camber (arch) and raise the rear
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Using 2 of the SS Springs that are for the drivers side, less arch than the passenger
Side, slight rake
 
Brooks James said:
Using 2 of the SS Springs that are for the drivers side, less arch than the passenger
Side, slight rake
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Do you know your current alignment specs? What tires are you going to run up front?
 
Let's not forget the geometry improvent if we use our SPC gen 2 upper arms with taller ball joints. The reduction of body roll from shortening the moment arm is something that is noticeable.
 
I can’t speak for SPC in terms of the specific joint availability. We have their first gen arm that takes a typical K772.
 
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Last I heard alot of people had breakage at the welds, or bending on pot holes from all the different manufacturers. This is why I stayed true to stock but with offset bushing

I followed this chart and got the typical performance street settings. Alignment shop did some tweaking to get it though
alignment-specifications.gif
 
dodgedifferent2 said:
Last I heard alot of people had breakage at the welds, or bending on pot holes from all the different manufacturers. This is why I stayed true to stock but with offset bushing

I followed this chart and got the typical performance street settings. Alignment shop did some tweaking to get it thoughView attachment 1715925298
Click to expand...

Oh bullshit.

There was one control arm manufacturer that had failures, CAP. They only had a couple that anyone could actually show pictures of, and they had documented quality issues. Hell I had a set. They were bought out by QA1.

I’ve never heard of any other manufacturer, other than CAP, with control arm failures. MagnumForce had a couple of K frame failures early on, but I’ve heard nothing recently.

I’ve never heard of any QA1, Hotchkis, SPC, RMS, Firm Feel or honestly anyone other than CAP with control arm failures. It’s not a thing.
 
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72bluNblu said:
Oh bullshit.

There was one control arm manufacturer that had failures, CAP. They only had a couple that anyone could actually show pictures of, and they had documented quality issues. Hell I had a set. They were bought out by QA1.

I’ve never heard of any other manufacturer, other than CAP, with control arm failures. MagnumForce had a couple of K frame failures early on, but I’ve heard nothing recently.

I’ve never heard of any QA1, Hotchkis, SPC, RMS, Firm Feel or honestly anyone other than CAP with control arm failures. It’s not a thing.
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This was when I was building my dart. Maybe 10 years ago? Things have likely changed alot since then.
It was all over Fabo at the time. Heim joints was another issue.

Hotchkiss and many others were not available at the time
This is coming from memory and a bit foggy.
 
72bluNblu said:
Oh bullshit.

There was one control arm manufacturer that had failures, CAP. They only had a couple that anyone could actually show pictures of, and they had documented quality issues. Hell I had a set. They were bought out by QA1.

I’ve never heard of any other manufacturer, other than CAP, with control arm failures. MagnumForce had a couple of K frame failures early on, but I’ve heard nothing recently.

I’ve never heard of any QA1, Hotchkis, SPC, RMS, Firm Feel or honestly anyone other than CAP with control arm failures. It’s not a thing.
Click to expand...

dodgedifferent2 said:
Last I heard alot of people had breakage at the welds, or bending on pot holes from all the different manufacturers. This is why I stayed true to stock but with offset bushing

I followed this chart and got the typical performance street settings. Alignment shop did some tweaking to get it thoughView attachment 1715925298
Click to expand...
It’s unfortunate when posts get this far off track.
 
dodgedifferent2 said:
This was when I was building my dart. Maybe 10 years ago? Things have likely changed alot since then.
It was all over Fabo at the time. Heim joints was another issue.

Hotchkiss and many others were not available at the time
This is coming from memory and a bit foggy.
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. That was over 10 years ago and a single, small manufacturer that has been out of business now for the better part of 10 years.

The heim joint thing was never about failures. There are wear/longevity issues associated with running heims on the street. But again, some of those issues were before heim joint boots were widely available. And really, that’s about application. Yeah, I’ve had the Hotchkis supplied heims wear out in 7k miles. But I was also driving year round on the street without heim boots (not available), seeing all weather conditions, gravel roads etc. On a track car, or even a street car that sees limited mileage or only fair weather driving it can be a different story.

Personally I prefer to keep bushings vs heims and use Delrin or poly bushings But that’s a street car that sees a significant amount of yearly mileage. I don’t like changing heims every year or every other year. For a different application it may be perfectly reasonable to run heims, some people might get 10 years out of them were I got one just on mileage.

But that’s a REALLY different story than saying there’s been “a lot of people had breakage” from “all the different manufacturers”. That’s just straight up not true, and a complete misrepresentation of reality. How often do ball joints pop out of the stock UCA’s? How many people put tack welds on the ball joints when using stock UCA’s? That’s far more frequent than documented aftermarket UCA failures.

BergmanAutoCraft said:
It’s unfortunate when posts get this far off track.
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I agree, it’s unfortunate when people make wild over generalizations and exaggerate/misrepresent facts to mislead people into thinking something that isn’t true, whether that’s intentional or just bad information.

But all I did was call bullshit on the misinformation that was given.

There are still points to be made there, it’s not off topic. CAP did make UCA’s and there were failures. That is a consideration! You are buying a part that is essential and critical. So using a known manufacturer with a good track record, even if they’re not the cheapest, should be something people evaluate.

As a guy trying to sell the most expensive UCA’s currently available I would think you’d want good information out there that represents the facts, quality, and utility of the aftermarket UCA’s out there.
 
Exactly the Information that should of been brought to view for an educated decision for the original poster.

Missinformation about drawbacks etc. This is why I responded to throw out a viewpoint to take note and look at. Research is what they are after.

I still believe it's a waste of cash but that is my .02
 
dodgedifferent2 said:
Exactly the Information that should of been brought to view for an educated decision for the original poster.

Missinformation about drawbacks etc. This is why I responded to throw out a viewpoint to take note and look at. Research is what they are after.

I still believe it's a waste of cash but that is my .02
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But you did it in a way that was wildly inaccurate. There were never failures from all the manufacturers. Literally 1 or 2, and the main culprit has been defunct for a decade. I’ve never heard of a catastrophic failure from Hotchkis, SPC, Firm Feel, RMS, QA1, PST, etc.

And the utility depends on the application. If all you’re going to do is run 14” or 15” rims with narrow all season tires then sure, stock UCA’s with offset bushings and the +3.5* or so of caster most can get with those will be ok. But having run 15” rims and 215’s on my Challenger I can tell you even that that set up felt better at +5* caster than it did at +3*, the steering and handling feels much more stable with more positive caster. Which has everything to do with the the factory suspension being designed around bias ply tires.

And if you run 245 or wider tires up front you will absolutely notice the difference running more positive caster. I won’t go as far as saying it’s mandatory, but it makes a huge difference in steering feel and stability with wider tires.

Unless you’re running bias ply’s or a strip only car I think the additional positive caster you get from tubular UCA’s is well worth the price. And if you’re building your car for handling with wider front tires they’re a huge benefit.
 
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