[Walt Fricke]

The A arm moves in its two rubber bushes - front and rear. If, when you had the T bar out, you could move the A arm, it would be hard to concluded these bushes had turned to a sort of rubber JB Weld.

The strut's movement is in the ball joint and the shock tower bushing up top. It is a bit hard to see binding on either of these resisting the 750 or so pounds each side sees statically.

Disconnecting the sway bar (somewhat of a PITA? - maybe just unbolt its chassis holders?) might be worth it to try to be sure which side has the bind. This would allow you to isolate the sides.

You seem to think it is the left side which is binding? Is that because jacking the right side by the bottom of the strut (or rotor) shows motion, while doing that on the left shows none as you state?

You say this was with the shock disconnected. You mean you removed the nut up top, compressed the shock, and swung the strut out of the fender, as if to replace a shock? Or otherwise the top of the strut had no connection to the chassis? I can see why this would point to the A arm.

Are these Boge struts? I'm trying to think of how bump rubber could fail and cause a sort of intermittent lock up. The internal environment of a shock would seem to be pretty clean, no way really for grit to get in and mess up valving.

No way can I think of that stock diameter T bars could cause any of this - they are far away from the A arm tube's walls.

A puzzle for sure.