I'll backtrack a bit. I've had front suspension problems since I first bought the car. After I removed the two wooden pieces of 1X2 someone had hammered in between the spring coils, the tires rubbed on the inner fenders. Since then I've replaced the springs, upper control arm bushings, ball joints, rod ends, etc. I've had it aligned and I still don't like the geometry. I still get some tire rub when hitting a large dip in the road. My tires and wheels are a bit larger than stock but smaller than a lot of guys have on thiers. I thought I'd try other than factory alignment settings but since I've only one shim in the right arm cross shaft the garage could not remove what was needed to get the caster and still keep the camber. I searched for offset ball joints then thought of narrowed control arms. I finally removed the front suspension yet again and inspected all the parts. The lower arms are beat to heck. Both are bent enough to put the ball joint aft of the correct position and the right also seems to be outboard. I bit the bullet and bought new control arms from Global west. That blew the budget for a couple of years. After installing the new arms I discovered the lower bump stop does not line up with the bump stop boss on the frame and there is no steering stop on the arms. As I found out from another post (thank you) the bump stops are in three different places in three years. Global west only made provisions for two. I contacted Global West about the bump stops and steering stops. They had no answer for the bump stop other than different years had them in different places and that they use the steering gear as the steering stop. I think they should have told me ahead of time these arms really don't fit a 68 Firebird. Now I'm stuck with control arms with no bump stop and no steering stop. I asked them about welding the bump stop nut in the correct location and also welding a nut on the arm and installing a bolt and locknut as Dennis did on his original arms. I have not recieved a reply from Global West. It's a shame to have to modify brand new parts to get them to fit and/or work correctly. In the 8 years I've been working on this car I haven't bought one aftermarket part that fit or functioned correctly. The next SEMA convention in Las Vegas should have a huge banner "SEMA-HOME OF PARTS THAT DON'T FIT"
