Boxing uppers and lowers

[granitestategn]

I'm getting ready to box my rear control arms. I was poking around under the car spraying everything down with PB Blaster in preparation and noticed that the access to the uppers is pretty good. I'm planning on removing the lowers to change the bushings when I box them. I was going to leave the uppers alone but it looks like it would be easy to box them in place. Are there any major pitfalls with doing this? The only one I can think of is putting too much heat into them and ruining the old bushings. Oh yeh, and setting the car on fire! Any thing else I should be concerned about?

 

[GNVAIR]

There really is no need to box the uppers. The lowers are the ones you should be concerned with. Make sure you add some sort of reinforcement between the sway bar bolt holes. If not, you collapse the tubes. I used a stock rocker arm shaft and cut short pieces and welded them where the bolts pass through.
I also made my own plates out of 1/8" thick steel and tig welded then. I found that the tig doesnt seem to distort the tubing as much as Mig does.

 

[GN ERGY]

There should be a spacer in there already that your bolts are going thru. Just weld it in place before you box them in. I call it a dog bone spacer. O----O It sort of looks like that.
Tarey D.

 

[granitestategn]

Tarey

Yeh, I saw that spacer. I didn't know if it was welded already or not. I guess that's step one!