Mopar Muscle Association UK

My upper control arms are scrap. Well one is due to the thread being damaged. Fortunately I've never driven the car.

Just wanting an opinion on whether I should go for fully adjustable ones or stock.
Classic industries sell the stock type but I notice they come with upgraded ball joints. Are they better ball joints than the original type? They look similar/the same to me.

The adjustable ones are more expensive and the fact that they are relying on sound welds to hold them together concerns me. Are they much of an improvement over stock ones on a car that will only be used for cruising around? The car is a 68 Charger 440 R/T.

At the moment I'm leaning towards sticking with the stock type arms but interested to hear any opinions.

As ever, it depends on the intended use.

Stock ones do not give enough caster for track use (or in many ways road use as well!!)

A compromise are the QA1 units that come with ball joints and an extra 3 degrees of caster, but they still have rubber onto the body and bind too much for track use....

Thee uber expensive fully adjustable ones are the best, but they will take a lot of setting up to get the best results.

I have seen stock arms with the ball joints welded in too when the thread has failed!

I have put the offset bushes into stock UCA's but I do not think they made a great del of difference....

Thanks Pete. Some food for thought there.
It never occurred to me to weld the ball joints in. As I've already purchased new ball joints I may do just that and replace the UCA's for adjustable ones later.

I have a pair of good used UCA's here if you need them.

Cheers Blue. I'll pm you!

It looks like Blue may be able to save the day but for future reference does anyone have any experience with these?

https://www.classicindustries.com/product/sp94450.html

They look well made and sturdy enough, fully adjustable and reasonably priced when compared to Hotchkiss.

I think they are the industry leaders for non-race applications.

Cheers Pete,
I'll stick those on the want list then!

Matt74 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 21 12:39 pm It looks like Blue may be able to save the day but for future reference does anyone have any experience with these?

https://www.classicindustries.com/product/sp94450.html

They look well made and sturdy enough, fully adjustable and reasonably priced when compared to Hotchkiss.

I have those on the challenger and they have improved it's handling considerably. However, when my friendly mechanic was setting up the geometry it did take a couple of hours to get it all sorted - all together a lot more movements than he was used to.

DougieJ wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 21 8:30 pm

Matt74 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 21 12:39 pm It looks like Blue may be able to save the day but for future reference does anyone have any experience with these?

https://www.classicindustries.com/product/sp94450.html

They look well made and sturdy enough, fully adjustable and reasonably priced when compared to Hotchkiss.

I have those on the challenger and they have improved it's handling considerably. However, when my friendly mechanic was setting up the geometry it did take a couple of hours to get it all sorted - all together a lot more movements than he was used to.

I'll keep that in mind. Cheers Doug

The beauty of the SPC arms is they can be adjusted in situ, much less work to set up. Most arms are on off on off until you get the adjustment within the range of the cams, very slow work I can tell you having done it on several cars. You can’t get much caster with stock arms even with offset bushes. Non adjustable aftermarket arms usually have 3 to4 degrees of caster designed in, fully adjustable ones might achieve as much as 8 degrees. Caster is what causes the steering to self centre, adding more increases that self centering action meaning the car will feel much more stable at speed.

Blue wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 21 8:47 pm The beauty of the SPC arms is they can be adjusted in situ, much less work to set up. Most arms are on off on off until you get the adjustment within the range of the cams, very slow work I can tell you having done it on several cars. You can’t get much caster with stock arms even with offset bushes. Non adjustable aftermarket arms usually have 3 to4 degrees of caster designed in, fully adjustable ones might achieve as much as 8 degrees. Caster is what causes the steering to self centre, adding more increases that self centering action meaning the car will feel much more stable at speed.

Cheers Blue. I think it makes sense to upgrade to these in the near future.

Matt74 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 21 12:39 pm It looks like Blue may be able to save the day but for future reference does anyone have any experience with these?

https://www.classicindustries.com/product/sp94450.html

They look well made and sturdy enough, fully adjustable and reasonably priced when compared to Hotchkiss.

Yeah - I am running those. They went in clean, and Roger at Monkfish set the car up and recorded (his words) the best alignment he's seen on a Charger. Certainly improved things. Recommended.

morgan wrote: ↑Sat Nov 13, 21 10:42 am

Matt74 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 07, 21 12:39 pm It looks like Blue may be able to save the day but for future reference does anyone have any experience with these?

https://www.classicindustries.com/product/sp94450.html

They look well made and sturdy enough, fully adjustable and reasonably priced when compared to Hotchkiss.

Yeah - I am running those. They went in clean, and Roger at Monkfish set the car up and recorded (his words) the best alignment he's seen on a Charger. Certainly improved things. Recommended.

That's good to know Morgan, thanks.
I'll order some after Christmas!

The other option is long upper ball joints

https://www.qa1.net/circle-track/rod-en ... all-joints

if you fit a taller joint into the control arm
the control Arm is rasied, thus it sweeps a slightly higher arc through suspension travel.
the arm doesn't get any longer so the main impact is that you have more negative camber to start with.
the arm is designed to dial in negative camber as the suspnesion compresses into a corner if you start with the arms slightly rasied you start with slightly more negative camber

if you have more ngative camber to start with you can go to town on positive castor

it does mess with the roll centre of the car slightly
and these are race parts , totally rebuildable , read into that either Robust, or need mainatnce regularly. i.e what does race parts mean??

you can go further by using lower ball joint shims from mancini raceing
they space out the bottom balljoint at its two mounting bolts
this adds even more negative camber but will also have a detrimental impact on tyre life as the wheels will no longer turn around a centre nominally in the middle of the tred pattern. they probably don't anyway if you have non standard wheel offset


Dave