Is this lower control arm toast?

[ShelbyDogg]

Yep

[shadango]

To quote one of my kids' favorite cartoon characters,           "BARNACLES!!!!!!!!" 

I know its a dumb question....but not usable (if I want a good alignment) , right?

I wasnt sure how much bend would be acceptable , if any.

My gut says not to use it...   

[the_engineers]

I think your old one was better.

[shadango]

I'm gonna try to find another one again.....I guess worse comes to worst I'll use the old one.....but would rather have a 100% straight one....

[the_engineers]

Is it going onto a 100% straight car?

[shadango]

<grin>  Don't know, but why install a part that is bent from the beginning?

If this was an easy-on easy off in 10 minutes kind of part it might be worth trying....but its not.

Why do you ask...am I chasing the holy grail of e-bodies (a straight LCA) ??

[the_engineers]

IDK...it may be.  With all of the discussion about how easily these are bent, you may spend more money than is "reasonable" to find one that is straight.  More likely than not, you may have to buy a pair.

Now that you have a press, can't you straighten your old one?

[shadango]

If I had to buy a pair to get the straight one I guess I would have to.

Yeah, I have the press, but I dont know if I like the idea of unbending a critical suspension part......

I mean, I aint no expert as far as how these are supposed to look/measure etc...thats why I was asking to begin with, but my gut felt it wrong.

Sprecks had said he had a couple pair....maybe one of his is straight....I'll cross my fingers I guess.  LOL

On the upside, today I finished the wleding and grinding on my other LCA...got the new sway bar bracket welded on...so that made up for the bad news of the bent passenger side. 

[LAA66]

 Well, let's see your handy work.

 Still waiting to find a good passenger LCA myself. There is an aftermarket (total different style) control arm but I'd rather stay with original.  Good luck and please do the legwork for us bro.

[shadango]

Here are a couple pics.....I am very new to welding and still learning....faaaaaaar from perfect, but I think its getting there...... 

[shadango]

How about these as far as straight? Hard to tell from the pics....I have asked for closeups of just the ends...

[autoxcuda]

How about these as far as straight? Hard to tell from the pics....I have asked for closeups of just the ends...

This is a game of power of suggestion.    The LCA's on the bottom is fine. It's really tough to see in a picture. You have to take the picture with the lens right on top of the end piece. When you have two LCA pictures the one off center will be hard to tell because of perspective of the picture.

How about taking the pictures with a physical straight edge down center of them.

Here is a bent E-body LCA....

In case you didn't notice, the one on the LEFT is bent.

[ShelbyDogg]

You might want to weld a little more on the sway bar mount. I don't see any good beads in the picture. Think about how much load is on that thing when the car is going around a turn very fast, both up and down.
Compare them to a factory welded one.
 (sorry to pick on your welds but you said that you're new at it)

[shadango]

Thanks for the feedback....

I dunno.....I beat pretty hard with a hammer on it and it wasnt moving.....I did both sides of everywhere it touched the LCA...the welds are pretty thick and the heat has pentrated to the rear side of the metal as I was told to look for......the pictures make it look different than in person too...so not sure if that is the issue .....

[ShelbyDogg]

Okay, it was probably a bad pic then.  look at the pic above again and you'll see what I saw.