I'm continuing to work through the assembly of the front and rear control arms so I can get them all test fitted in the chassis prior to powder coat. For the front lower control arms, as well as the rear IRS upper and lower control arms, I'm using the new spherical bearing inserts that FFR now offers. They seem like a nice upgrade, even for a street-only car. They are, however, a little different to install than the poly bushings they replace. First off, in order to be able to get the outer bearing sleeves in, I have to sand away the powder coat on the inside of the bearing tubes pretty much down to bare metal. I could possibly get away with removing a bit less, but that would require pounding or pressing in the outer bearing sleeves, and that would be pretty much a "one-time in and it's done" deal vs. having the ability to remove and re-orient the bearings in the control arms. This is significant because the bearings are not symmetrical in terms of how much they protrude from the edge of the control arm. On the one side, the tapered inner sleeve is almost flush (maybe ~1/16 protrusion) with the outer sleeve. On the other side, the inner sleeve sticks out quite a bit more (~3/16?). As shown here:

http://www.factoryfiveparts.com/sphe...-control-arms/

In speaking with the folks at FFR, this is by design so that the suspension can be tuned by shifting around the control arms. Playing with how the bearings are installed, you can make the overall control arm fit wider or narrower, or shift the arm forward or backward. Given that my build is street-only, I'm not overly concerned with tuning the suspension, but this ability is very handy in being able to find the best fit for the control arms in the chassis with the minimum amount of frame tab bending.

This is all a very long-winded way of saying that being able to remove and re-insert the outer bearing sleeves during fit-up is handy, but this requires the inner tube to be sanded down to bare metal. So when I do finally decide how I want all the bearings oriented, what's the best way to assemble everything so I don't end up with a bunch of corrosion where aluminum (bearing sleeve) meets bare steel (control arm). My original thought was to coat the bearing sleeves with anti-seize, but I was in the auto parts store today and saw a tube of something called Permatex High Temperature Sleeve Retainer. This sounds like the perfect solution, as it's designed to lock slip fit sleeves in place and provide corrosion resistance. Is this a good solution, or are there better options?

Thanks,
John