Drilling spindles for larger ball joints

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baja_jon

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Well guys after a frustrating front end rebuild I have realized my upper control arms for the 72 duster are shot. The threads to hold the new ball joints in are gone.

Time to upgrade to tubulars.

Anyone have any links or suggestions on drilling out the spindles to accommodate larger ball joints?

Thanks
 
The common fix is to tack weld the ball joints in the upper control arms.

The spindles take the same stud on the small and large ball joints for our A-body cars so there would be no reason to drill them if you buy the correct uppers.
 
You would need a proper tapered reamer to change the hole in the spindle.
 
Oklacarcollecto said:
The common fix is to tack weld the ball joints in the upper control arms.

The spindles take the same stud on the small and large ball joints for our A-body cars so there would be no reason to drill them if you buy the correct uppers.
Click to expand...

No, taper size is different, otherwise there'd be no reason to change the uppers when going to disk brakes
 
Tack welding the joint in place three or four places works great. Place ball joint in position and tack weld from the bottom in case you ever need to replace them again. In newer cars like my Durango ball joints are crimped in the a arm you have to literally grind the whole bottom of the joint off then use a press to remove. The replacements use a c clip so you only need to grid once but what a pain.
 
its entirely possible that drum brake spindles and disc brake spindles have the same taper for the ball stud. I've never checked that.
I know many tie rod ends have the same taper at ball stud.
 
Thanks guys, I might try to tack weld rather than shelling out for tubular arms and having to drill. Thanks
 
baja_jon said:
Thanks guys, I might try to tack weld rather than shelling out for tubular arms and having to drill. Thanks
Click to expand...

If you don't want to weld them, you can usually pick up some good small ball joint upper control arms at a good price because they are switched out when people go to lbp brakes.
 
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