So I pulled the A-Arm on my '75 and it's badly worn. The torsion bar has worn smooth on one side and the inside of the A-Arm looks like this:

Click to view attachment

This is really worn on one side. I'm replacing the bushing with the spherical and I am concerned with how out-of-round this opening has become. So my question is how worn can the center of the A-Arm be to support a rebuild and 100K miles of use?

I also have no idea what is on the end of the torsion bar. It was filled with grease and a sticky sponge.

Click to view attachment


Thanks,

DaveB

The sponge is a donut shaped seal for the end of the bar near the adjuster side.

There is a small sponge on the end of the torsion bar, soaks up the grease prevents the grease from escaping.
Is the torsion bar damaged?
Press off the bushings clean things really good and than inspect. The new bushings might be all you need.

Wow what a mess, Ive never seen an A-arm that worn from the T-bar/bush sagging. The torsion bar HAS to be equally compromised. Theoretically the T bar should never hit the A-arm tube so it might still be usable but Id find another.

The torsion bar has a flat area where it rubbed. It's really bad. The other side is normal wear and the torsion bar is still all red. Not a bad idea to find a better A-arm.

Thanks,

DaveB

I have a set of stock 914 17.9 mm torsion bars I can send you if you're willing to cover shipping from NorCal. Send me a message here if you're interested. -- Randy

@DaveB

It is the rubber bushing that is distorted. Very common. It does not mean the A arm is out of round. Those bearing brackets need to be round to work with sperical bearings.

Bruce nailed it.

Click to view attachment
Absolutly the sagging of the bushing is the cause, but you can see the T bar has ground the A-arm tube because of it.

Randy - I really appreciate the offer but I'm going to put in a slightly bigger T-bar to adjust for the increased breaking with my set-up.

Regards,

DaveB

Ok,
If you are going racing, strip that a-arm and make sure it’s going to hold up to the new stress.
Second…just my experience..which may be meaningless.
Stick with stock torsion bars up front
Get the biggest adjustable sway bar you can get
Get koni adjustable struts.

After all my setups, I realized heavy bars up front actually remove a lot of adjustment (200 lbs on drivers side only) and in the end it made the car push way to much.
Tunable struts and tunable sway bar are the best….again this is just an opinion.