well bought some adjustable control arms off of ebay and the problem is that the bushings are to big for the bolts. lower arm bolt size .52 and bushing hole .62, upper arm bolt .46 and bushing hole .55. too sloppy for me. was wondering if anyone else has gone thru this or is it just me and anyone know of any where i could get bushings that would work the hole in the arms are 1.5" id. or steel sleeves with an outer dimension of .87 or a little bigger? any help would be appreciated, buyer beware also when contacted seller he said size doesn't matter because once you tighten the bolts it wont move

 

I think that somewhere around the 99 model year they changed the bolt sizes of the bushings, it looks like if his arms are built to spec that you ended up on the wrong side of the spec... Would it work to buy some bolts of the proper size for the bushing and just drill out the CA mounts?

 

Don't listen to the seller... haha According to your dimensions it sounds like you could drill the holes on on the frame and buy a slightly larger bolt. I know when we installed the lift on my old truck I had to drill the holes out on the upper frame mounts so there wasn't any slop in the joint/bolt.

 

I've just spent a week trying to find the right CA for my 2002 and now know a lot about the differences. 2000-2002 are all the same, bigger bolts, slightly bigger cam washers and bigger frame holes. My 2002 was in an accident and both lowers and one upper were bent into an A shape. Been to many wreckers and now have mastered this bloody problem. Why Dodge or their suppliers made a change like this??? Who knows?

Anyway, my alignment shop said the same thing that has been posted here, you can use the smaller bolts as they just clamp down on the bushing center. I found near new '98 CAs with the smaller holes and bolts, but being a perfectionist, chose to make up the right ones, as Dodge wants $350 each for them. I found two bad CA that each had a good remaining bushing (the bolts freeze in the bushing and the wreckers torch the bolts to get them off the diff) heated the CA around the bushing, it popped out, did the same on the good bushing, froze it, popped it back into a CA to make a perfectly good CA, took an hour to do the whole thing. $350/hour is a pretty good wage these days.

BTW, Dodge sells the bolts, both sizes and are around $20 each. They come with the Cams pressed on under the head so make sure you get the ones that are for your year of truck, so there is no slop between the cam and the axle.

So, hope this helps your work.

Cheers

Paul

 

Just a thought..... are the bushings interchangable between the controll arms themselfs???? You could also get a small metal sleve that could take up some space even if you had to drill out the holes in the control arms... Just throwing out some idea's.