1972 Plymouth fury III suspension rebuild questions

[Trace 300 Hurst]

If you have any questions on the products that we offer please let me know.

Thanks
James From
PST Marketing

James,
Maybe if you fabricated/sold a cheap removal tool, you'd sell LOTS more torsion bars and related stuff.

Just sayin'....

 

[Trace 300 Hurst]

If you wanna demonstrate your artistic inclination, a sketch would be really cool

Your wish is my command: Torsion Bar Removal Tool--Make it yourself

 

[Analog Kid]

I rebuilt my Fury's suspension last year using the PST kit.

I'm just getting back into auto mechanics after a 20 year hiatus so I'm not really qualified to give advice here....but I'll tell you what my experience was like.

First off...if you like beating on metal, then suspension work is for you. My suspension hadn't been apart in over 45 years so it needed lots of patience and lots of PB blaster. Spent a whole weekend and broke two punches just trying to get a roll pin out of the strut arm.

Separating the upper ball joint is a black art. I used the two hammer method. Take two hammers and whack the knuckle at the same time and it will pop right out.

Torsion bars came out easy. I removed the C-ring at the rear and when the lower control arm was loose I just wiggled it back breaking up all the gunk holding the torsion bar to the arm. No tool needed.

I took the upper and lower control arms to a shop to have them press in the bushings. That part I couldn't do myself. Also I didn't end up using the sway bar bushings that came with the PST kit. This is because the original sway bar links are spot welded together so you need to break the welds to get the old bushings out. I wasn't about to try and weld them back so I just bought new hangers that came with their own bushings.

If I happen to remember anything else, I'll let you know.

 

[Analog Kid]

Also....the upper ball joint socket I used was a 1 and 59/64th socket. See link below for Amazon. I bought the one for Imperials by mistake and had to return it. Used a 3/4" breaker bar with 2ft pipe on the end but still needed two people for this. One person to turn the bar and the other to help keep the socket from slipping.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003IOEQ1O/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[68PK21 440.6bbl]

Separating the upper ball joint is a black art. I used the two hammer method. Take two hammers and whack the knuckle at the same time and it will pop right out.

I've done so many I've done it that way, two proper same sized ballpeen hammers with a synchronized hit and it'll pop out first try if you do it right. Tie rod ends too, just use a smaller set of hammers.

The roll pins were even a ***** when the car was only a decade old.
But a little heat is your friend.

Upper BJ with the proper SnapOn socket & a breaker bar and pipe will do the trick (1 man) but a good air impact wrench is so much faster. (not a wimpy electric kind)