If I had seen the fully adjustable upper arms from SC&T first, I wouldn't have bought the GW arms. They gave me more caster, but I was disappointed how many shims it took to get 3/4* of camber and that was about the limit of the shim stack on my subframe.

I measured the front end geometry on the bare subframe. That was an easy task with the subframe sitting on stands with no springs installed. Basically I proved that what David Pozzi says is correct. The tie rod ends need to be dropped somewhere between 0.4" and 0.5" lower than stock to make it neutral bump. I can't find my graph of the bump steer, but it was pretty bad. It would explain why my first Firebird pulled side to side while shifting. I've only seen two solutions. One is the Howe tie rod ends carried by SC&T and the other was the Baer adjustable end. The Baer solution is a Heim joint and I don't trust it... I'm not sure they still offer it.

I didn't mention, but I also went to the Delrin bushings. When you subtract out the cost of OEM upper bushings, installation, labor etc, the GW arms with delrin bushings, upper ball joints installed and already assembled seemed like a reasonable buy. I put the Delrin bushings in the LCA also. The LCA would be a bigger job to swap bushings later on, so this seemed like the time to install them. Another budget buster... The upper bushings were shot when I bought the car. The cross shaft was riding steel on steel even though the car passed Virginia safety inspection in 2000.

The front torsion bar is somewhat hard to reach later with the car assembled, so I went to the Hotchkiss tube bar while refurbishing the front end. That kit included polyurethane bushings. I swapped to ENS polyurethane sway bar bushings on another car, and I like & recommend them.

I also relocated the upper control arm mountings in the subframe by the vertical amount on the Guldstrand template but without setting the mount further rearwards (which gains caster), because the additional caster is built into the GW arms.

Mike, I think you summarized it pretty well.




Project goals need to be set against the budget. The "want to have" list can swell the budget and it's probably more important to finish the project or at least set goals before expanding the scope.

I also put in a new steering gear box that gives me two turns lock to lock. I hope that wasn't a bad choice... Any way you look at it, an old bird is going to need a fresh steering gear.