A stamp Cadillac - warped rear arms

[Drewbert34]

Hello everyone!

I'm working on a restoration of an A stamp Cadillac RC10 I bought off eBay.

Overall, the car is in wonderful shape. It's right in that "not nice enough to shelf but almost too nice to run" area lol.

Anyway, during disassembly it looked like the rear suspension mounts were reversed as the rear arms sat at a very noticeable negative castor. Thinking little of it I carried on.

Now I'm at reassembly and realized the suspension mounts aren't backwards, but the suspension arms appear to have warped. If looking at the arm from the hub carrier end, the hub carrier pin (and arm) isn't parallel to the transmission end on the arm, as if the pressure from the shocks has twisted the arm so that it now has negative castor, instead of the stock positive castor.

Anyway, has anyone ever experienced this? I hate it because the arms don't have a mark on them!

Also, the gold pan chassis doesn't sit flat when stripped down...as if the rear end has been bent forward, somewhat. Is this normal? I seem to recall the gold tubs being flat.

Anyway, I love this place and hope to show off my Cadillac A stamp and my A&L graphite chassis car, soon!

[jwscab]

the tubs are stamped(so they aren't always perfect), and if it's been used at all, there is a very good chance someone impacted something pretty hard. It's very common that tubs go banana shaped. You can flex them back down, with the right amount of wood blocks, some tweaking and pressure. Be sure to have the rear bulkhead in place, and something strung between the front nose plate holes so the sides stay in position. when you go to straighten out, the sides of the tub flex in and out which can give a false impression that you are done. then flexing them back into position will put the tweak right back in the chassis.

as for the arms, I can't say that I have seen warped arms, but its very possible. I have seen warped front arms on the jrx2 series cars, but that plastic is a different blend. that said, all plastics are 'plastic' and can be warped with the right pressure. Someone probably had the gold springs on, clamped way down on the shock body with too much pressure and no internal limiters.

you might try boiling the parts to see if undoing some stress will relax the warpage.