This thing has fought me every step of the way but I think I can see the dawn now.
The new Delrin bushings are all installed, top ones had to come back out yesterday to be drilled for zerks because there's no way to get a drill in there with them installed in the beam.
Reinstalled and made sure they lined up, then put the zerks back. Test fit the upper control arms in these and no reaming was needed.
Lower inners were the hardest but I installed them with a piece of pipe with a washer welded to the end.
This was after drilling two holes through the bottom of the beam even with the dimples (no way to drill into the dimples because of the body work) and installing small sheet metal screws through them to act as a hard stop.
I felt the inner bushings seat on those screws. The outers easily pressed in by hand. While I was at it I painted the spots Tommy missed.
That was last night.
This morning I got the center grubs tightened and the adjusters reinstalled, leaving the spring packs centered and correctly oriented. Later I got all the trailing arms back in—three were easy but the lower driver's side, after about an hour and a half of jiggling and re-trying, required a bit of shaping on the ends of the leaves with the grinder.
Again the arms went in tight but I did not need to ream them.
Then the driver's hub reinstalled loose for alignment.
Tomorrow after breakfast I'll get the passenger side back on. Ready to re-grease and then clean...everything.
Like, the ramps are covered in grease. Also the shock towers. There's grease all over the trailing arms and on every allen wrench, socket, ratchet, open wrench, screwdriver, hammer, chisel and of course the home-made tools and probes and what-not, both in this bay and also at the welding table and the doorknobs and switches... It's bloody unbelievable.
And of course the rotors have grease on them. They have to. I need an olympic-sized lap pool filled with BrakeKleen. Very much looking forward to this step in the process.
Then it's just a matter of reinstalling the calipers, shocks, swaybar end links and wheels before re-doing (third time? Fourth??) the front camber and toe-in.
And then? Back to our regularly-scheduled fettling.