Rear control arm is taco'ed. Need some advice.

[Nay]

Have you seen these bad boys from Man-A-Fre?

http://www.man-a-fre.com/pa/4plus80seriessuperhdlowercontrolarms.htm

Report back on how those heims last - nobody has been able to get an acceptable useful life out of a heim based control arm in the Jeep world, and this has to do with the fact that an unsealed joint in a load bearing application doesn't hold up well to the grit that is collected with a lot of road use (they are ok in applications like steering and panhards if you have some tolerance for wear and the occasional squeaking). For trail rigs, they are an ideal solution for simplicity of sparing and strength.

What we need are "johnny joints", which are sealed, greasable, and rebuildable spherical ends, and are pretty a standard in control arms for dual purpose rigs. It is amazing to me that there aren't metric sizes for the Toyota world as we need them badly. I'm going to keep saying this until somebody who wants to make a nice chunk of change does it, because a heavy duty arm with a johnny joint on the frame end and rubber on the axle end will immediately become the standard.

Nay

 

[Mickldo]

What's the easiest way to repair, removing and flatten in a BF Vice? I like the gusset idea for now (cheap and easy) and I have one bent one.

To straighten mine I just sat the arm on a couple of pieces of timber and whacked it with a sledge hammer, using a third piece of wood to cushion the hammer blows of course. Provided they are not kinked you should be right.

I used 30mm x 30mm x 3mm angle iron it seemed to fit better than 25 x 25 (1" x 1").