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Suspension cross member


GTP091
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I’ve been looking to replace my suspension crossmember for awhile now.  Part 10262854.  Wanting to get a rust free donor from the JY so I can sand blast it and restore it.  Will do tubular Gen2 lateral arms at that time as well.  Does anybody have any comments on removing the crossmemebr? The book makes it seem so easy but I’ve put a breaker on JY units here and there and the bolts on the cars I’ve tried are frozen solid.  Will they only come out with heat?  I can’t bring a torch to the JY so just wondering if I can get them free with regular grunt power and PB soak.

Edited by GTP091
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I take it you're referring to to the rear crossmember....

It comes out the easiest after everything else has been removed 1st.....

drop the struts upper mounts, disconnect the outer lateral links, disconnect the rear end of the trailing arms, loosen off the knuckle to strut bolts, slide the knuckle/struts off the spring ends & the anti-roll bar ends, now there's no leaf spring tension......

the 4 bolts that hold the member to the chassis are torqued to 85 ft.lbs but with an old salvage yard car you may need a looong breaker bar to free them up, from my point of view if the bolts break off as you're trying to turn them out then you're ahead of the game. 

somewhat surprised that where you are you're dealing with salt rot.

Edited by 55trucker
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No salt rot on my car,  just want to restore/replace it so it looks brand new again. 1 part of my never ending resto.  Everything else other than the four bolts is easy.  I’ve rounded a few heads on JY cars and never got a single turn but wasn’t really prepared either.  Just wondering if anyone has gotten em off without heat. My breaker isn’t big enough so will need a longer bar for sure.  Don’t want any hernias. If I could just sneak in a torch…

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9 hours ago, GTP091 said:

I’ve been looking to replace my suspension crossmember for awhile now.  Part 10262854.  Wanting to get a rust free donor from the JY so I can sand blast it and restore it.  Will do tubular Gen2 lateral arms at that time as well.  Does anybody have any comments on removing the crossmemebr? The book makes it seem so easy but I’ve put a breaker on JY units here and there and the bolts on the cars I’ve tried are frozen solid.  Will they only come out with heat?  I can’t bring a torch to the JY so just wondering if I can get them free with regular grunt power and PB soak.

I couldn't find anything with that part #.  Are you sure it's correct?  I'm seeing 10062854 being the crossmember.

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Ya that’s it.  Nothing to buy anywhere that I looked except OEM cats. No big deal if I can get one and sandblast it and paint etc that’s all I’m after.  Have you ever taken yours off?

Edited by GTP091
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7 hours ago, GTP091 said:

Ya that’s it.  Nothing to buy anywhere that I looked except OEM cats. No big deal if I can get one and sandblast it and paint etc that’s all I’m after.  Have you ever taken yours off?

No I haven't.  I seriously thought about it when pulling the tank on the International for the fuel pump change out.  That's not a fun job.  But, it would probably be a lot of unnecessary extra work.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just did this this weekend, actually- The bolts are held on with blue loctite.  They came loose with about the same effort as removing lug nuts.  However, I'm in AZ, so there is no rust involved here.

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I just did the same thing this past weekend, everything came out easy enough except for the four bolts with blue loctite. I should have brought more water cause I nearly passed out the junkyard it was so hot.

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  • 4 months later...

I pulled the trigger on the Gen2 lateral arms yesterday.  Still have not found a suitable subframe to restore. Even though my car is parked for the winter now I don’t want to use my existing subframe if I can help it so going to hold out for a JY pull, it’s been difficult though as the w’s are so rare these days.  Theres a cutlass supreme at the local PnP so might go check it out. I have found a new old stock unit in the US but the landed price will be around $600 for me so can’t really justify spending 750 on this upgrade just to make things look a bit more pretty. When. It a

l starts to come together I’ll post the progress so others can follow down the road.  It’s not easy to piece these types of things together from a bunch of different 10 year old threads that have lots of questions and little follow through.

thumbs up to Chris for having the most useful info.

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Oh man I`m sorry I missed this thread.

I did a resto on mine, 95 CS Vert and went with some modded 2nd gen links. I used a long piece of steel pipe that went over a breaker bar to get the 4 mounting bolts loose, the longer the better and makes one hell of a noise. One thing I had to scrounge at the JY was some unique clips for the monoleaf. There are 2 bolts on either side that hold the monoleaf up that thread into insert clips that when rusted will break and just spin. That is how I ended up dropping the entire assembly so I could get to it. I couldnt find a PN number for these nor does the FSM really have any info other than a smudge on the exploded diagram.

 

Edit: IIRC I had taken some pics but I think they may have been on a phone damaged long ago. 

Edited by rich_e777
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  • 3 weeks later...

Well I got me a subframe from the JY.  Was a bit of a bugger in the snow but it didn’t put up much of a fight. It’s in good shape. The old lateral links on the JY car were pretty trashed. I undid them at the knuckle and undid the trailing arms as well. Used my persuader to smash the knuckle away from the leaf. That was exciting when it let go.

The lateral arms are about 1.5” different in length from the front vs the back. Just like has been said before. 

2EF8EB17-D3D7-457B-B7B1-254B63F1AF13.jpeg

Edited by GTP091
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