| The orginal idler arm used homemade plastic stock to make replacements for the proper bushings. I have since replaced both of them with Chevy parts and it works much better. |
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| This was the pitman arm/center link connection. It was totally loose with the wrong nut & spacers. Could have fallen off at any moment! I finally got the correct washer/nut combo and it works good now. |
| Boy was it SHOT. Everything changed over to Japanese parts. Had to buy new lower control arms & spindles cause the lower ball joints were welded in the arms and the spindles mounting hole drilled out for the larger ball joint shaft. Also, front brake backing plates had been hacked to make the Japanese wheel cylinders fit, so they were replaced too. I replaced the lower control arm bushings, idler arm bushings, upper and lower balljoints, spindles, wheel bearings & lower control arms. I decided to keep the tierods & centerlink as they are in decent shape and work well despite not being Chevy. |
| The THAI brakes finally failed backing out of the driveway (LUCKILY not on the road). The homemade wheel clyinder pushrods (pictured left) finally allowed the piston to go too far and it lost all the fluid. I have since changed all 4 drum brakes back to Chevy and installed a dual master cylinder. Had to change all brake lines too as everything was metric.No more nail biting everytime you hit the brakes! Even the emergency brake works now, which is something VERY rare in Thailand. |
| FRONT SUSPENSION |
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| Here is one of those aforementioned Japanese lower balljoints. The uppers very much resembled the stock Chevys so they were probably the orginals (they were VERY loose!) |
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Note: They had the brake drums switched front to rear to make the Jap brake pads fit! Also, the rear brake backing plates were swtiched sides for some unknown reason and had to be switched back to make the e-brake cables fit. Luckily the stock 10 bolt is all Chevy with 3.08 gears. |
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| Hacked backing plates to install Japanese wheel cylinders. |