The front suspension of my car had some interesting modifications done to it by the previous owner. The story I got from him was that this was all done, at least in part, to eliminate a bump steer problem that the car had. The first thing that I noticed (and thought looked very unsafe) was a 2 3/4” spacer that was added to the bottom of the spindle. The following picture shows the changes from original that were made and what I had to work with when I got the car. The lower control arm was modified by removing the ball joint and installing a Heim joint with that scary spacer and ¾” bolt. The upper control arm remained the same but was repositioned 3” higher on the frame onto an extension of the original mounting plate. The steering tie rod end was changed to a Heim joint and attached from below to the spindle rather than on top.



My first thought was to return everything to original but hesitated on that for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that I have heard and/or read that other owners have also had bump steer issues with their cars. Mine was originally manufactured in late 1992 and, from what I gather, one of the first with the newer suspension, which perhaps did not have all the “bugs” worked out at that time. Bump steer in the later cars was either eliminated or not the problem that some make it out to be. Whatever the case, mine is what it is. My second reason was purely economics, replacing the Heim joint with a ball joint meant new lower control arms (or precise modifications of the ones I had) and spindles because the tapered seat had been drilled out for the ¾” bolt that was installed. I decided to clean up what I had, assemble it, and see how the bump steer issue ended up.

This next picture shows the cleaned up front end with a bar replacing the spring to approximate the proper ride height of the car. I set the caster, camber, and toe, and checked for bump-steer. My first results were not good but by simply adding a washer between the tie rod end and spindle I had, believe it or not, 0 bump steer. This might be the first modification done by the original owner that I don’t have to undo, it does, however, need some improvement.



The improvement has to do with that 2 ¾” spacer on the spindle. It just looked to me like something that could put enough leverage at the connection point to the spindle to break it. For my peace of mind here’s what I did.

I changed to longer bolts on the brake caliper bracket on the front and rear of the spindle so that I could attach a reinforcement for the spacer.



I fabricated the appropriate pieces and welded everything together. Here are the results.



I plan to add dust shields to the Heim joints to keep them clean and still have to install the sway bar.

To be continued…