I have 4 leaf springs in the back with double adjustable varishocks and that works great for me so far. I am thinking of upgrading the front suspension. I drag race but really want to get into some open course races too. Need some advice on what to do for the front suspension and here are my options: This a coilover conversion that will mount the shock on the LCA but we are worried the LCA mount on the frame is not strong enough to support it. The other option would be to get a coilover to install on the UCA which is the same geometry basically that we have now. I'm still a little confused as to what advantage there would be if any for the shock to mount to the LCA vs the UCA
Is there something wrong with your LCA mount? The top one is designed for our type chassis and only a small amount of additional loading would be transferred to the LCA mount. The ball joints are different when you move the spring mount to the LCA due to the loading of the lower joint and the spring/strut mount is almost all the way outboard so the pivot should only receive a slightly greater load than it has now. The Mustang guys seem to be having good luck with the installs that I have seen and alot of them are road racing them. The biggest advantage is suspension travel and ride hieght adjustment. Stock front susp travel is only around 7", some of those can get close to 10". The springs are lighter than their stock counterparts and you eliminate the spring perches, which reduces unsprung weight.
i like the bottom pic. thats the product that ive been dreaming of in my head for years. didnt know it existed. i like the fact that the loads are all in the factory locations
The first pic looks like a nice setup. It looks like it lowers the pivot point of the upper arm a little compared to the stock a-arm. Like a mini shelby drop. Plus if you are worried about flex at the lower arm frame mount you can add the Road Race belly bar that TopoRanger is making for the mavericks. And it comes with the strut rods with the spherical bushings you guys were talking about making.
What about this kit Bryant? But with a coilover instead of a spring. It uses the better upper arm with the pivot point dropped.
i like that one also. looks like that set up will work with the stock control arm or there control arm. gives you room to grow as money tree grows.
You can PM GrabberGT to ask him about it. He's running that setup on his car: http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=54307&page=4
my concern with the strut going to the lower control arm is that weight of the car is now supported on the lower control arm. ford did not design it that way. is the ball joint strong enough and is the lower control arm mount location strong enough. now im sure you can replace the ball joint and reinforce the mounting point but that seems just like reinventing the wheel. kind of pointless. its added expense for no real gain that i can see.
TCP's and several of the other kits that use a LCA mounted strut use a lower loaded ball joint and unique LCA that is specifically designed for the loading. As far as the inner pivot, it was mentioned to use TOPORANGER's belly bar to brace it since it ties into the inner pivot but since the weight of the car is supported by the shock tower and all of the original framework and bracing remains intact, I don't think there would be a reason to think the chassis would be compromised. Global West does recommend a different kit without the arning drop for drag race applications, so make sure you thoroughly check what each company recommends and why. It would be nice if we could get some input from someone who has this type of suspension installed to have a better idea of the pros and cons outside of speculation and the word of the manufacturer of the kits. I spoke to a Mustang owner that had one installed on his car at a car show, but he only had about 3k miles on it and it was more of a trailer queen than road car. He did like it tho, said it handled extremely well and was neutral in cornering, no under or oversteer. Another advantage to either kit is the availability of double adjustable shocks. We've installed QA1's (which are similar to the Vari-shock) on several different models of Fords. They are double adjustable meaning compression and rebound can have different rates of dampening (which is really good for drag racing) and the range is from a Lincoln like ride to a rock hard corner carver.
A friend of mine has the first one installed on his 68 Mustang coupe, the ride is rough, but the car handles amazing.
I obviously don't know much about suspension but still can't quite grasp why the handling would be much better with the shock mounting on the LCA vs the UCA. The price is going to be about the same on both kits. I did contact TCP and not too much help on email but the tech recommended getting the kit that mounts on the UCA if I will be doing a lot of street driving as well.
From what I understand, the biggest advantage to the packaged kit with the LCA mount is the shock travel and the geometry improvements (UCA drop for camber curve correction) and the since the car is sprung closer to the wheel, it has the ability to control the cars attitude quicker and with a lighter spring allowing the shock to better control movements in the suspension, but like Dave said, probably at the expense of comfort because there is now only very hard (camparatively speaking) components between you and the road. Even the ones that mount in the stock holes have the UCA drop incorporated and GW was the only one that gave you the option of a stock UCA mount that specified for drag racing when I was shopping for my car. What I found interesting was that GW was not recommending the arning/shelby UCA drop on drag cars. I can only guess that it's because you might be better off with a little understeer to prevent overcorrection when the rear gets loose. (I'm not a drag racer, so that's a wild guess) Even if you did the coilover conversion without the entire kit, the double adjustable is very nice so you can individually dial in compression and rebound. For what you're doing, I probably would get the coil over instead of the entire kit. Street or Track is another supplier worth checking out. The guy I corresponded with is pretty sharp too and their stuff is track proven as well.
