Lower Control Arm question

[jeepthing07]

Which way do you mount rustys control arms with the bend pointing down or up? the main reason rustys arms look better for my MJ is that when I welded on a new LCA mount its positioned a little lower than the original and the stock arm is hitting the mount on flat ground. rustys arms have a bend in them and looks like they would clear the bracket better than the straight rubicon express arms (if the bend points down) I never lifted a coil sprung jeep and a noobie when it comes to control arms.

 

is the control arm shown here upside down? If not that bend would be hitting my mount even worse.

[Pete M]

The bend points down and is closer to the axle. It's to clear the coil spring perch when the axle droops. But I imagine it should work just fine if you need to mount it in a different orientation to clear your custom stuff.

[jage]

I had some of these and they mounted and worked like Pete said. Everybody always says "get adjustable control arms", which have threads in the middle or on the ends so the alignment shop can get your tires perfect.

 

I always figured the one piece would be stronger, but that was until my alignment shop smashed the tube at the elbow straightening it to fix an alignment problem¹. Once the tube is out of round they are a lot weaker, and afterwards I noticed the dent got worse and worse after dragging the LCA over rocks right there, but one never occured in the other arm. The same treatment probably would have folded a stock arm so I wouldn't not buy them because of that.

 

It's possible that the original dent was from rock too, not the shop. I'd like to think they know better but I had both the alignment and a wheeling trip between perfect arms and having a dent and like I said the other arm was never damaged... :dunno:

[DirtyComanche]

I'd notch the LCA brackets for clearance... You're going to have trouble with it bottoming out on them otherwise.

[jage]

I had stock uppers, the bent LCAs and 6+" of lift and my shocks were the limiting factor. The bend does a really good job of increasing your LCA mount clearence. Personally I wouldn't notch until I knew it was a problem. Of course my lower shock mounts were tented after awhile, so I'm not convinced that plate is terribly strong even unmodified.