I was talking to a friend of mine about redoing my front end suspension and steering. He told me he heard of people welding a sheet of metal to the underside of the A-arm to stiffen it. Sounds like a good idea.

Anyone have any experiences with doing this?

 

As long as the steel is heavy gauge then it should work. I did it with my panhard rod becuase I was bored.

 

This is all you need for reinforcement.

 

How long did it take to remove those, I'd love to do that.

 

Thanks Barris, thats exactly what I'm looking to do. How thick are the plates? Steel I assume?

Thanks for the info.

 

It takes about an hour each side (less if you use a lift) to remove them. Jack it up, take the tire off, put the jack under the control arm, remove the upper strut nut, lover the strut down, keeing an eye on the spring. once the control arm is down far enough, the spring will "pop" out, you might want to stand back and use a long pry bar if the inboard side of the sping is hung up in the A arm. Next, pop off the lower ball joint, then the control arm bolts. That's all there is to it. I used some 3/8" scrap steel on mine, around the same places that are shown in the picture. Dont forget to paint over all bare metal, and use new poly busings in the control arm, as long as it's off.

 

Any improvement that you can notice ?

 

This is getting extreme. You will only notice such improvements if the rest of the car is built up to par. Otherwise, you will not notice any A-arm deflection if your strut mounts are rubber, your a-arm mounts are rubber, your chassis is flexing, etc, etc... when I say the car needs to be built, I mean built in order to feel any difference in this area of A-arm flex.

 

That's what I thought. Heck I didn't even feel much difference when installing the steering brace.

Oh well, considering I should change ball joints and stuff soon anyway, why not go to the junkyard, get used A arms, weld them up and then take them to a shop and have bushings pressed in.