Oh Lordy, I now own a Fordy (a Lincoln actually)..

[njsteve]

Everything came out without a single broken bolt! All four original riveted ball joints are nice and tight - just as tight as the brand new AC/Delco ball joints I bought three months ago. They are going to stay in their boxes. (Unfortunately it's too late to return them to rockauto).

The other oddball thing I found was that the passenger side upper control arm bushings were rotating in the upper control arm. I wondered why it was so easy to move the control arm up to free the spindle. And then I saw the problem. At least it made for removing the control arm pivot very easy. I just removed the outer nut and washer and popped them out with a screw driver. I checked the new bushings for fit and the are tight and need to be pressed in properly. The driver's side bushings will take an air chisel to get out.

Here's all the parts after cleaning in purple stuff. Got some masking of the ball joints to do, before I can sandblast and paint the parts.

[scuncio]

That passenger shock situation is crazy.

[njsteve]

It's just crazy. It means that when it was installed, the "mechanic" never even put the lower bushing and washer on it. Otherwise that lower bushing and washer would have been permanently retained in position by the bend once it kinked over on itself.

I went over to my buddy's garage this morning and used his bushing press tools to install the lower control arm bushings. As for the uppers, we damaged one (or it was defective). When we pressed it in, onto the shaft, the outer case pressed in fine but the inner rubber just stayed in place about an inch out of the bushing. We have a new Moog bushing coming in on Wednesday and that should take care of it. Then I can clean and paint everything.

I also got a second opinion on the ball joints. He checked them and agreed that they were nice and tight and there was no need to replace them. The rubber seals were all still good too.

[njsteve]

Got the last bushing installed on the upper control arm and everything is painted semigloss black. I have been soaking the spindles and coil springs in used engine oil after degreasing them. Interesting stuff here: the spindles are technically a two-piece unit with the caliper bracket safety wired to the spindle frame. All the paint markings and even the white plastic ring around the spindle are intact. The left and right coil springs have different paint codes. I assume to identify two different spring rates.

[njsteve]

Got everything buttoned up today. Yesterday I reinstalled the upper and lower control arms, washed out and re-greased the wheel bearings, and after remembering to borrow the coil spring compressor from my buddy, I was able to install the coil springs. They just needed that inch or so of arc, to get them back into position to be able to swing the lower control arm up with the floor jack. Today I finished up the brakes and sway bar end links and lubed the ball joints and tie rods. Took her for a ride and she really does ride nicely now. Especially with two functioning shock absorbers in place.

The old boat actually did a one legged burnout while attempting to get up to speed with traffic on a local road. Those 2.8 rear gears are rather hard to get moving but once they do, it actually pushes you back into your sofa when the four barrels kick in.

I am thinking about swapping out the steel rims and hubcaps for some later model Lincoln turbine wheel. It would save some weight, look classy and get rid of the really out of round steel wheels. The first 20 years of my grandfather commuting over all those New York City city potholes did a number on those rims

[njsteve]

Here's those later aluminum turbine rims on a 1971 Lincoln Mark III. 15x6.5 inch, 4.5 by 5 in bolt pattern. They came on a lot of Ford and Mercury products in the 4.5" bolt pattern during the 1980's. The Lincolns actually used a 5 inch pattern later in the 1970s but switched back to a 4.5 in the 1980's. So I need a Ford set with some Lincoln center caps.

[njsteve]

I installed the Redi-Rad I got for the car in December. Pretty interesting contraption. It allows you to play your music on the AM radio via your cellphone. It adds an input lead that goes in the headphone jack of your phone, Ipod, DVD player, Beta-Max, or whatever.

Pretty simple installation if you can reach the antennae lead on the back of your radio along with a ground lead and a power lead to the fuse box. The antenna lead just plugs in series with the factory antenna and you set the radio to 1000 on the AM dial.

In other words it took several days of dash disassembly on this car to get to the back of the radio which is in the top section of the dash, above all the automatic A/C climate control duct work. I waited a few days for my cuts and scrapes on my hands to heal before reinstalling all the parts.

Here's the website: https://redirad.com/

Now I can play some appropriate theme music while cruisin' the scene with my Detroit lean.