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I used the 73 strut rods for 2 reasons. 1..the washers seem larger for the 73-vs-70. Even though both the 70/73 strut rods are the same length/thickness, etc....the 70 has fine thread(which would be stronger I quess)..but with using poly strut rod bushings, the 70 strut rod setup would not squeeze down far enough to place in those "safety roll pins". The 73 strut rods seems to have that hole drilled further up, so I went that route and put in the pins. I quess I could have just redrilled the 70 strut rods though.



I have been told that the 73+ strut rods are longer than the 72- parts. I don't have one of the later ones to compare, so I can't verify that. I will say that I had the same problem you had with the 73+ strut rod bushing not compressing far enough. For me, using the MP poly SRB, the sleeve in the bushing kit was too long, and the nut would bottom out on the sleeve before the bushing was compressed very far. This, and what I suppose to be a slightly longer 69 Valiant strut rod being used on my 74 Dart donor-car K-member & suspension gave me fits with the poly LCA bushings. I had to do two things to fix it. The first was cut a disk of bushing material off of the inner SRB biscuit that was equal to the difference in length of the strut rod. For me, that was about 1/8" or so. Note that I didn't install the giant washers as shown in the attachment. It seems that some cars came with them installed this way, but I have no evidence that mine ever did, so I went with them facing the other way. The second was to cut off about 1/4" of the bushing sleeve, so that the bushing would actually compress to the proper torque setting without bottoming out on the sleeve. After I did those two things, I got all my lost caster back (almost 4* of positive caster without the "problem solver" Moog bushings), and the poly lower bushings stay nice and tight against the shoulder of the LCA stud. I think that anyone that's going to use poly bushings should measure how the system is going to bolt together before actually putting it together. The time to fix any strangeness is while it's all apart. It sucks taking things BACK apart to chase some of these little things down...

Clair

68 Sport Fury Vert (440/727) Getting a heart transplant...
69 Valiant 100 (340/833/EFI)