HELP Rear control arms

[Screwz]

Thinking baked on enamel for the finish that you are trying to remove. Very hard and durable. Blast cabinet and a bag of Black Beauty abrasive.

Or a visit to your local indie speed shop and score a pair of Hotchkiss uppers. Your stock bushings look their age and the factory bushings never were about handling or performance. it is possible to keep the stock uppers and rebush them but those bushings to do not like to come out and require serious encouragement to get them to vacate the premises. If memory serves i posted pics on what it took to yard the bushings out of the upper ears on my rear end this past summer as well as the tools I used to stuff the new bushings in. Fun? NOT!

I’m not sure what the coating is . Its hard to get off and clearly can’t prevent rust . I’m probably only going to remove it from the outside . As far as the bushings go I’ll replace them with rubber ones . I don’t want to feel every crack in the road .

 

[69hurstolds]

Can't offer much in the black coating situation, but as far as the part itself, it COULD be an original UCA. Poking around some in the parts books, I found some descriptions for the same part that were different. I originally thought 78-88 A/G rear UCA were all XR if zero offset. (XY and XZ are 1.5 deg negative and positive offsets respectively). But I've run across this listing as well.

10000076, 0 deg. Code XR, XN, XP & XX. Control arm.
Caballero, El Camino. Upper, XR, XN, XP & XX. Zero degrees.

The interesting issue is this arm part number is used from 78-88 on A/G applications, and there's probably a zillion of these out there. Older cars use a different p/n. So whether it's indigenous to your particular vehicle would be anyone's guess. I was under the impression that there was some length differences between older A-body (pre-78) and the newer upper A-arms. The LCAs are different for sure. G-body rear LCA is 19.25" center to center. Old-style 70-ish A-body LCA is 22" center to center. I would imagine UCAs are a tad longer as well.

 

[tngbody]

I drill out the rubber and used a reciprocating saw on the sleeves

 

[ELCAM]

I drill out the rubber and used a reciprocating saw on the sleeves

I use a 1/4 inch drill jam it in next to the outer shell once it drills through it usually grabs the shell and walks around the perimeter and cuts the rubber lose, drive out with a punch and hammer. I use a hack saw, take the blade out of a hack saw and put the blade in the sleeve and reassemble the hack saw, Even by hand I seem to slightly groove or scar the arm so no power saw for me.

 

[SS_Malibu]

I used a porta-power and a large socket to get my front control arm bushings out. I put the new ones in the freezer the day before to help press them back in.