Front control arms, replace or repair?

I had a look at my front suspension last night. Sway links are toast, the upper bushings are crap, and it appears the upper ball joints are pretty old. It does look like everything has been greased properly.

New ball joints are about $20 each and the bushing kit is about $10 for each arm.

However, the arms are about as rusty as they can get and I wonder if it is more worth it just to buy new arms. Autozone has them with ball joints and bushings for $130 each. Save myself the huge headache?

You can get complete arms with the balljoints and bushings for about the cost of replacing the parts on your old ones from Rock Auto ($61.79 plus shipping). They are a bolt in item, so you do not have to get a ride to a shop to replace the bushings (and cost of labor), and added down time.

The sway bar links usually have to be removed by force. The nuts are locking, and it is easiest to just use a nut cracker to take them off. Unless you are going to race the car, get the standard links.

"nut cracker?"

My 1/2" impact won't do it?

Sometimes holding the other end still is impossible, and the nut can round off instead of turning.

Looks like I can get arms, sway links, sway bushings and shocks for about $200 total. Not bad.

I have to see if the steering box can be adjusted as the slop is pretty bad. I don't have a ton of experience with these really old steering systems. I'm a bit amazed at how complicated it is compared to a standard rack/pinion setup.

The FSM has a procedure for tightening the steering gear. I wrote it on here or the ISSF. Do a search.

For adjusting the box: http://web.archive.org/web/20081020031447/http://www.monte-list.nu/tech/boxmesh.shtml