The Orange parts book shows one one style wishbone, the shorter 387/388 as of 4/75 which is strange. Only the ETK will have the correct answer, RealOEM will always show what it fits today, not what it was designed to fit originally, big difference.
No, RealOEM is where I got the superceded part numbers, you need to know how to look, using YOM (year of manufacture) and looking at ALL the diagrams, BUT there's still no guarantee that any single reference will always provide you with a comprehensive picture. This is why the orange books can be helpful if you also know how to use them based upon their publishing date (thats called "context") ... it is not unlike using a 2800CS/3.0CS blue book for certain tasks, even when knowing it is not exactly corresponding to a 2nd series 3.0CSiL
I regret selling off my multiple sets of orange books before realizing this
Oh, f.w.i.w. I deleted my "-30-" (journalistic notation for that's all I'll say/write) in my earlier post because lloyd, as well as HB Chris made comments that I think need to be emphasized and need to be remembered...the front suspension is a system of (over time) different parts engineered to work together, and changing "a" component in the system can alter things like handling in an unfavorable way if it is not installed with the other components it was designed to work with. The earliest E3's and E9's used a strut tower/knuckle combination that had 8mm lock bolts and used the early short arm with a corresponding geometry torsion rod. When the towers went to 10mm lock bolts, "some" cars came with short control arms and "some" came with the longer ones.
Also parts of the point I'm trying to make: on the cars with longer arms, the knuckle that bolts onto the bottom of the strut tower has a different machined angle on the mating face to keep proper camber with the bigger track...
AND part number references are helpful to a point but Chris points out (in a way) that when part numbers are superceded, sometimes the earlier part numbers are lost....
AND more than that, a superceded part number may have other mating parts that have also been superceded by the modern replacements and often enough there is no easy way to determine if a modern part number has compatability with your car's components....
AND with 45 year old cars, its not easy to tell what pieces have perhaps been changed out over the years...whether correctly or incorrectly.
You may now decide that I am just stating the obvious but this thread shows that, clearly...."we" don't all get the nuance.
