There are rubber as well as urethane (or polyurethane) upper and lower control arm bushings. I highly recommend replacing those bushings with rubber - otherwise your kidneys will feel every grain of sand on the road, every blonde hair as well as every ant or bug you drive over. This is one area I do not recommend urethane bushings - unless you plan on doing some serious racing with the car.
Parts that normally wear out are:
Lower Control Arm:
Lower Ball Joint and Control Arm Bushing are items that normally wear out (blue circles).
Lower Control Arm rubber stop (purple circle) - which are sometimes missing or broken. If broken or missing, you will have metal on metal after hitting a large bump in the road. If intact, no need to replace.
K-frame to frame rubber bushings (more about this later).
Upper Control Arm:
Blue circles are the same as top picture. These items to normally wear out on cars life.
Upper Control Arm rubber stop - sometimes this is broken or missing. If intact, leave alone.
Torsion Bars:
Shocks do wear out - and is the most common thing to wear (on any car). I would replace these before anything else.
Torsion Bar Bushings (brown circles) at K-frame or at Lower Control Arm. These items do give some people problems but most of us, those bushings are usually good. The bad news is if your torsion bar bushings are bad, there are none available (from Chrysler or aftermarket). More about torsion bars below.
Steering:
The Tie Rod Ends are an item that wears out, with the Pittman Arm and Idler arm a small distance behind (gold circles). Slop in the steering gear (pink arrow) is a bigger issue - but maybe the least cost effective item to fix.
Sway Bar:
Here Urethane (or Polyurethane) makes a HUGE difference on how car handles over rubber. Unless there are no options, I will NOT use rubber for sway bars (as opposed to control arm bushings, where I WILL NOT use urethane). Bushings for item # 3 and 5 are almost universal parts.
The sway bar frame bushings (item # 10) are more specialized - but can be located. The trick with middle bar bushings is to measure the diameter of bar and the outside diameter to get good replacements. Also, one will need to cut the middle bushings to get them to fit.
Also, links (item #1) have a tendency to break sometimes.
The big thing is not to replace items are not wore out. If ball joints are within wear limits and have grease zerts installed - use 'em (and keep 'em greased). Rubber control arm bushings do normally crack and probably do need to be replaced. If you need to replace ball joints or tie rod ends, get greasable replacements. If you grease the joints every oil change, they should outlast the car.
I agree with
@Duke5A -
the sway bar might make the biggest difference on handling once the worn/broken parts are replaced (I added the last item). The bad news is decades ago, there were a few companies who made sway bars for FMJ's. Now there is only one - Firm Feel. As far as factory parts, there are two different sway bars used. Front and rear bars from a police car
or the one used for every other FMJ. The Firm Feel bars are rather proud of their parts - but at least someone has 'em.
Firm feel also makes torsion bars - but unless you are making a full time race car or have an extra heavy engine, they are not worth the extra ride harshness. The factory torsion bars on all FMJ's are all exactly the same - except the police torsion bars had extra hard bushings.
Going back to the torsion bars. This is one area we can adjust to lower the car (or raise it, if wanted) - but if you do crank on those torsion bar adjusters, you will need to get car aligned afterwards.
The rubber K-frame to body mounts are nice when car is new. After a few decades, the rubber starts to sag like someones great grandmother (opps, did I say that out loud?). What happens on a fast hard turn, the steering moves the K-frame accordingly, then the rest of the body follows after a lengthy time delay. Finding new rubber replacement mounts is not easy (not made new, sense the '80's). Depending on the condition of your existing bushings and if needed, this is one area I recommend replacing the rubber K-frame mounts with factory cast iron replacements, or FFI's pricey aluminum mounts or Urethane. The K-frame mounts have one corner (the one closest to steering wheel) that is a bear to replace but other three are not so bad. If you want to replace them, I would wait until one had a reason to drop the K-frame - then replace them at same time.
Now the expensive item - the steering gear. Most of our steering gears either leak or are "sloppy" (ie: lots of slop). There are ways to rid the slop but in most cases there are only two good ways to do so. One is FFI's steering gear rebuilds. I actually have one in my garage ready for install. I have heard good things from another company, Steer and Gear (...I think is their name). I've not used them but have heard others have without any complaints from either company.
There is another company making new replacement steering gears adapted to fit FMJ's and they are one of our forum boards sponsors - Borgeson. They appear to be a much better steering gear for our cars - but, again, are (also) pricey.
Lastly, the last thing that can make our cars ride better, has nothing to do with the front end. That is the rear suspension ISO mounts (I mean, getting rid of). Those flat rubber biscuits holding the rear differential to the leaf springs were not the best when new, and after a few decades are just troublesome and don't do a thing for all-in-all ride-ability. Replacing the ISO mounts to older style shock mounts will raise the rear of your car about 1/2" and will make car ride better, less choppy on hard brakes and if your has some power, less likely to hop on hard takeoffs. They do improve the ride harshness the first couple of years - but after 10 years, it degrades it more so than any improvement it made. Also. the metal used on the lower ISO clamp is not that strong and are a common part failure.
One side benefit to replacing the ISO clamps with older Shock plates, is you can use the more readily available A, B & E-body rear shocks. Sorry, not much options for the front shocks - but any new front shocks will make car ride so much better than wore out old ones.
I have a press and tools. Replacing control arm bushings is not a biggie to me. If you lived closer, I'd say come on down, bring a couple cold ones and we can have the bushings replaced in no time.
If you have any questions, make note and post 'em.
BudW
