I went to a local salvage yard Saturday and looked at a set of disc brakes on a mid 70s vintage El Camino. Of course, those would be the tall spindles, but I have a question about the location of the tie rod end. When measuring from the center of the lower ball joint mount hole to the center of tie rod end mount hole in the tall spindle, it measures 6 1/2 inches. Stock Chevelle spindles measure 5 1/2 inches. This would put a heck of an angle on the outer tie rods in relation to the tie rod end joints. What needs to be done to counter this? Shorter idler arm and pitman arm?

I've been looking at my front end to see if I should do something and I believe the box and idler arm have to move ahead 2" and then the longer pitman and idler from a car with the tall spindles needs to be used. The difficulty of doing this because of the frame shape and then the swaybar being in the road has led me to just leave it as is for now and see how it works.

All in all, the linkage angles really don't look much different because it is 1" over a 2' or so steering linkage length.

You wouldn't want a shorter pitman or idler arm because that would shorten the turning radius even more than the tall spindles already do.

Peter