Reply to "What color looks best on the A-Arms, Opinions sought"

Depends on whats important to you; chrome wipes off easily in your yearly inspection for cracks, especially around the anti-roll bar attachments. Gloss lacquer also shows metal failures nicely since lacquer cracks easily when the metal starts to fail. This is not a place for armor-plated paint that hides such problems until the arm becomes two-piece!
As a moderator for Dave's webpage, IMHO the Pantera sub-chassis does bend and/or otherwise permanently deflect with age or abuse, most noticably in the rear. Running vastly oversized tires or hitting curbs or racing will make this situation worse. A-arm mount tabs on the body have been known to bend or crack under severe impacts. The anti-roll bars are not mild steel, they are (probably) 300-M steel, since they function as simple torsion-bars. Heating anti-roll bars to adjust things either anneals them into mild steel at that point, or shock-cools them to extreme brittleness. Such torch-adjustments require correct re-heat-treating the bars back to their original stiffness.or they will simply bend (or crack!) under loads. I once broke a 7/8" thick anti-rollbar with my hands after simple heating & bending. NOT recommended! I suggest finding the problem in the chassis that caused the misalignment, such as popped spot-welde (as in my car) and avoid the problem entirely. As a final correction, balljoint removal needs a solid hit at right angles on the forged-steel socket of the upright, not on the mild steel hollow a-arms, which will easily dent.