flat6toV8

I just replaced my upper control arms on my 96 ls400 tonight. Here are some tips to make it easier for the next person. 1st side took an hour to remove/replace. Next side took 20 mins.

a) you do not need to remove the strut. You can remove the top 3 bolts if you want to for a little extra wiggle room.

b) when pulling the bolts that connect the UCA to the frame, they will probably hit the springs. Use a pair of channel locks to compress the specfic area to get the bolt out.

c) put some penetrating oil on the old ball joint first to start to loosen the connection. I whacked the ball joint with a hammer ( going upwards ) on the threaded portion and it eventually came out. Whack from diff angles if you can.

At one point, i was concerned that the UCA had to be installed with the vehicle at "road height". But it turns out that the UCA doesn't rely on the rotational twisting of the bushings ( thank god. )

I also installed new front brake pads. That was pretty easy. I got a new shim kit too, so the retainer spring is all nice and shiny.

dashan

A very nice post.

Where did you get the uca? for how much?

flat6toV8

I got it from sewell ( with 10% ) discount. They were still about $270 and $300 a piece. Total about $600.

You can get them both from iron toad for about $400, but they are not OEM parts.

I had a bad situation ( with another car ) where I got non oem parts. When i disassembled everything, i found that a bushing was not pushed in correctly, making the part unusable. So i had to reinstall everything ( becuase i had to drive the car the next day ), then return the bad part, then disassemble everything, and then do the final assembly again. I guess the good part of this was that I got pretty fast at doing it.