[johndewaele]

74 Spyder. In order to clean up some surface rust on the cross member, I am thinking of removing 2 of the bolts that hold the lower A frame to the cross member so I can really do a complete job. They are the 2 toward the rear of the car. Am I asking for trouble? I could remove one at a time but taking the two out at the same time would save me a lot of time.
Thanks in advance.

 

[Gregs Garage]

Yes, I would say you are asking for trouble. The whole assembly is under pressure from the spring. Maybe others have done this, but I would not. It might work if you support the spring pan with a floor jack to keep the A frame from moving down and letting the spring pop out. Even then it could just shift and make it tough to realign the holes to put the bolts back in. If you do it, at least put a chain or a cable through the spring and the A arms to contain it if it pops out. I would just use the threaded rod method of lowering the spring pan to take the pressure off the spring. It's pretty cheap for the parts at the hardware store and easy to do. Do a search in the suspension section. Maybe some of the pros will chime in here, but it does'nt sound good to me and I've had mine apart a couple of times.

 

[Tifosi]

So you wanna take the 2 aft bolts out of the dogbone and leave the 2 forward ones in place to allow you to clean closer to the point where it anchors to the chassis?
Yeah, that would be a bad plan.

Take Greg's suggestion and outright remove the spring using threaded rods.
It'll be safer, and you'll be able to clean inside the spring pan and bottoms of the arms too while its apart.

Bonus:
If you get the spring out of there you can remove the lower control arm assembly entirely and inspect the chassis to see how far that rust under the dogbone actually goes, get it good and clean, then apply encapsulation paint on there where it needs to be so you never have to frig with it again.