1972 Oldsmobile Cutlass Front Suspension Upgrade, Part 2
Now, getting underneath to start to attend the suspension proper, a few examples of the worrying stuff.
Like badly rusted fittings and fraying hoses.
In most brake jobs, this connection is the worst- the fitting between the frame mounted hard line, and the spindle
mounted flexible line. It gets the brunt of the road spray, salt, dirt water, bits of errant moose, etc.
In my experience, I think they were generally installed prerusted, and just got worse from there.
Now, I'm going to be replacing every bit of this, hard and flex, so really, I could just snap this stuff off with
a boltcutter and it wouldn't make any difference. But I figured I'd salvage what I could, if for no other
reason than to use as a pattern for the new lines. So, a bit more Kroil...
... Aaand nope. One came off with only minor rounding, the other snapped right off with literally frighteningly little effort.
(I've had a car's brake line rust through before- thankfully it was a rear, and I was stopped at a stoplight at the time.)
After that, one just pulls this little clip which retains the end of the hose to the frame.
With that done, there's the sway bar connections: Okay, rusty, a little crumbly, but not that bad?
Think again. A sway bar- or more accurately an anti-sway bar, or antiroll bar, helps keep the car level as it corners.
The softness or firmness- or, really, existence- of the bushings that help connect it to the A-arm, have a big effect on
the handling of the car. Being that loose has a big effect- big, bad effect.
So, we pop those out too...
And discover that regardless of the condition of the bushings, they really kinda needed to be replaced anyway.
Next, we remove the actual sway bar, as I'll be replacing it with a bigger one.
These rubber bushings were in surprisingly good shape, but I'll be replacing them anyway with stiffer polyurethane.
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