Control Arms

When it comes to aftermarket suspension upgrades nothing is available for these Big Fords. To our knowledge it has never been done before but the customer desires custom built upper and lower tubular control arms from scratch. Louie built a jig using the factory Ford arms as a beginning spec.
Machining takes place to attach the ball joints, a slim version ball joint will be used.
Plates are made and coming together.
Another angle shows them ready to attach.
Using the factory control arms we check our fit and weld the jig together
This side angle shows the jig looking good with the bulky orig Ford arm in place.
The lower control arm is much bigger and requires larger tubing to jig it up.
We square everything up and are ready to weld.
We fabbed some brackets to hold the arms in place.
These will be welded to the jig, this is where the arms will be bolted to hold it in the same configuration Ford built them in. Of course we are building them in chromoly tubing for lighter weight and better handling angles.
Using long shafts to keep it all aligned she is coming together.
The mounts are welded in place to bolt it down solid.
Another angle shows the ball joint mount held in place.
We ran angled gussets off of those to keep it from moving.
Lightweight tubing was used to build the new control arms allowing adjustable coil over shocks on the car.
Front control arm ball joint locations were machined for a smaller ball joint with the same bolt configurations.
Upper control arm is taking shape. We simply bent some light weight chromoly tubing on our Model 4 bender to our specs and this is the result.
Mounted to the car she looks good and is ready for fine tuning. Let's go to the other side to show you how we mounted it.
Old style perch needs changing to a cleaner system so we will cut off the rivets and show you how it is done. To the right is the jig between the control arm mounts to keep it all the same and hold it in place during fabrication.
As seen, once we cut away the old mounting perch the jig is still in place waiting for the new perch system.
We simply mocked up in chip board our measurements and we are ready to build it.
New plate bolted in place and we are ready.
A close-up shows the waves cut out to make it fit right.
The jig matched to the old Ford brackets is what holds the new system in place at the correct angles etc.
Welded in and ready to take some G force turns.