Miatav8,MstrASE,A&P,F wrote:
Your probably right. It looks like the taper's big end can't fit through the spindle's small end of it's taper unless he drilled out the spindle to remove the taper.
The tapered spacer cannot come out of the bottom of the spindle because, as you say, the diameter on the spacer is larger than the smallest diameter of the hole. Now, it could theoretically come out in the upward direction, but then it would only move about 1 cm before the ball joint itself hit the spindle, and there is no force applied that would pull it out upwards anyway since the A arm has the spring attached to it and pulls down, while the spindle pushes up.
Miatav8,MstrASE,A&P,F wrote:
On the lca, I second offsetting the plate to one side of the tubes. Also try to maintain the crossection in the fore/aft view, outboard beyond the first lbj bolt center, by at least an inch plus 1/2 the hole od.
Can you elaborate what you mean by this? are you saying the tubes end too far away from the ball joint centre? If that is what you mean, I think I agree with you. My thought was to put the shock/spring mount directly over the ball joint mounting hole, which would result in very little bending moment on the A-arm, but the shock may end up leaned over if the lower mount is that far out.
Cheapracer, I like your A-arm idea, might have to do that instead. It will sit quite a bit higher on top of the ball joint since it's quite thick at the end, but that's probably a non-issue.