1956 Ford F-100 Volare IFS Drop Spindle Rebuild - Volare IFS Drop

It was necessary to disconnect the upper and lower ball joints to detach the spindles from the upper and lower control-arms. A pair of dikes was used to extract the cotter pins.

The upper ball joint requires a 7/8-inch box wrench, and the lower a 15/16. We pre-soaked with Royal Purple Maxifilm and then turned both counter-clockwise.

We made our own ball joint separator with a 1/2-20x4-inch bolt threaded into 1/2-20x1-inch hexagonal connector. First the ball joint separator was placed in between both ball joint studs, tightened (expanded) enough to place a fair load, and then the lower ball joint was smacked hard with a 2-pound ball-peen hammer (see photo 10).

Next the upper ball joint was separated in the same manner, and then the stock spindle was completely removed from the upper and lower control-arms.

Although our Volare IFS has very low mileage, it is 20 years old. The ball joints are in perfect condition, but the ball joint gaiters (rubber boots) are rotted junk. Unfortunately exact replacement boots are not sold separate, but we did discover a good solution.

But first we had to clean away all of the road grime, and old grease with a rag. Then we lubed the uncovered ball joint with a grease gun to make sure the zerk fitting fed chassis lube thoroughly.

We looked to the folks at CPP (Classic Performance Products) for an answer to our worn-out boot problem. In this case a urethane boot from Energy Suspension was pulled from CPP's shelves to fit the bill. CPP also has their own line of general purpose rubber boots.

Fatman Fabrications includes special bolts to attach the stock Volare steering-arms to the Fatman Volare spindles. We used high strength red Loctite on the two bolts to diminish the odds of a steering failure.

A 1/2-inch drive air impact-wrench made double-sure.

The use of a hydraulic floor jack to compress the torsion bar enough to collapse the upper and lower control arms to meet the Fatman Volare spindles was instrumental to an easy installation.

With enough ball joint threads poking through the Fatman spindles, we were able to run the retaining nuts down by hand.

Next we finished tightening the retaining nuts down with a box-end wrench, and then used a scratch awl to line up the holes for the cotter pins (keys) to be pushed in.