Well, honestly I have never seen such a note in the Pontiac manual warning against lifting by the A-arm. The manual only tells you the safe lifting points. But the Panther is built exactly the same way and they warn against lifting at the a-arms. I asked folks a few years back why not? The answers were BS, such as "car would be unstable".

I've always done it that way (lifted at the control arms) on quite a few indentically contructed vehicles. Maybe some ball joints were threaded in. Now we have the answer. Don't lift by the a-arm because the weight transfers back through the press-fit ball joint connection and that can pull the ball joint back out of the arm.

So, I retract the BS meter. I ascribe the obervation/problem to incorrect but a very common service procedure. The problem is not well documented. In fact, I don't ever recall reading such a warning in any Chilton's either.

I've lifted at this point many times on other cars. I won't do it again unless the jack is directly beneath the ball joint.