Tell me why this isn't a terrible suspension design

In reply to Knurled:

Fords with shock towers have their own issues.

In high school I had a '77 Granada with the coil spring loading the upper control arm.

Never had a ball joint fail, but eventually replaced both upper control arms (at different times) because they failed next to the ball joint allowing the front end to collapse until the shock bottomed out and bury the tire in the fender.

Even strut front ends can suffer from ball joint failure if neglected. I saw a Jetta ignored so long that a lower ball joint separated going into a driveway.

Knurled wrote:

jstand wrote: As long as you inspect the ball joints for wear regularly and replace once you have play there shouldn't be any problems.

This. People don't freak out over tie-rod ends being mounted in single shear, and those come apart far more frequently than ball joints do. If you wanted to compile a list of vehicles that have load-bearing ball joints loaded in tension, you'd have to start with "every RWD American car ever made except Fords with shock towers" and include a lot of European and Japanese cars, like wishbone Hondas and all Miatas...

Was just going to say that, every rwd gm i have has the spindle between the joints, nuts toward the spindle, with the spring wanting to push them apart.

jstand wrote: In reply to Knurled: Fords with shock towers have their own issues.

Yeah, didn't want to get into that and make a giant wall of text They had a lot of issues but a lot of them stemmed from being cheap and crappy. And I'm a Ford guy saying this. Ford took great pains to use ALMOST enough stamping thickness or material folds or otherwise structural strength in their small cars.

I had a '65 Mustang in last year that basically needed a whole new front because the shock towers were cracking away from the inner fenders and the FPO (its like a PO but with a swear word in front) just slapped patch panels over top to hide the damage. Upper control arms were basically held in by vertical pressure from the springs, not much lateral support left.

Car would have been a good candidate for a Mustang II front end swap, at least. And huge fender flares, since the same FPO also Bondoed quarters OVER the rusted out remains of the original quarters. Actually the car might have mostly been a good VIN donor for one of those $20,000 repop shells if they're doing early coupes by now.

the only time I ever had a ball joint fail was when that batch of bat joints was circulating here in the US for the fiat 124. I had a lower joint blow apart into 4 pieces in less than 3000 miles. Spindle came out of the ball, and the mount part broke it's welds and separated into two.

It's replacement was already dead in less than 1500 and allowing massive negative camber.. but it's replacement lasted till I scrapped the car in another 20,000 without any issues