So I bought this car last summer and have slowly been pecking away at it. Price was right and the fact that it was mostly original with used up parts gave me the freedom to make it that much better and not feel bad about driving the hell out of it. I've removed all the hokey stuff, chased the electrical gremins, and now I'm working on the chassis. I have the service records from the previous owner and I think the only thing he ever did was regular oil changes and warranty work at the dealer. That left a lot of parts needing love. I’ve learned so much from the threads here that I wanted to put together my distillation of what I chose to take from them.
First up was researching and planning for an improved suspension. Thanks to lifespeed and your relentless pursuit of handling. I really liked the comprehensive trial and adjust in this thread and this thread but I need to do my suspension on a budget so as much as I would love to, I will not be doing the custom valved shock upgrades anytime soon. I did save the shock dynos for later though.
I put the car up stands and set to taking everything apart. I knew about and found; bad upper ball joints,broken front driver sway bar endlink, cracked front passenger coil spring, blown driver rear shock, rotted and cracked air bags, and compressed shock bushings all the way around. The previous owner really didn’t do anything to the running gear of this car. Everything was the original 110,000 mile parts and hardware.
Below is a picture of what came apart for the rear and everything that replaced it. I forgot to take that picture for the front. Remember, I’m on a budget so I waited until I found some 20% off ebay coupons and additional sale discounts to buy my metco control arms and watts link for $500 total. That turned out to be an even better deal because the vendor listed it as having the air ride bracket so when it arrived without (which apparently they all do now) they promptly sent me the bracket separately at no charge.
Here is everything that I put into it. I’ll comment after the list about some of the components.
Rear:
Metco upper and lower control arms - MCA0016
Metco watts link with air ride bracket - MWL0304
Stock watts pivot was firm and tight so it stayed
KYB shocks - 555603
KYB shock mounting kit -SM256
“new” junkyard OEM cream colored firestone airbags. they looked like they were on the car 1000 miles
Rubber sway bar bushings and links for existing 7/8” bar
Front:
Moog PI loaded aluminum lower control arms - RK80395/6
Moog forged upper control arm - RK80038/40
Moog sway bar endinks - K80140
Rubber 1.25” sway bar bushings
Used stock front coil from Comin' in Hot, thanks man!
Ford struts - ASH24540
With the blown shock and broken sway bar link you can imagine that this thing rode like Clarkson’s 3-story condo camper. Now it is fantastic but in my own pursuit I think it may need a few tweaks. The combination of the cream colored bags with the much stiffer bushings makes for a very well balanced rear suspension that has no hint of pounding. The KYB shocks cycle once and hold there, no floating, so let’s hope they don’t leak all over my driveway anytime soon. I did not like the bolts that came with the Metco watts link. The slot that they mill in the bar is significantly larger than the stock slot, so the small diameter washers and lock washers wanted to cant down into the bolt slot. In my parts bin I was able to find some factory nuts with captive washer that fit in the metco hardware slot so that made me feel alot better.
On the front I noticed and was surprised that my factory lower control arms had the original Ford non-pi rear bushings. I upgraded to the PI bushings which have more rubber in them. For the uppers, the moog arms were not setup to use the factory spacers, so I pressed the bushings in a little farther to make sure I could reuse the stock shims/spacers. I’m impressed with the Ford struts because they were listed for the car and seem very well balanced for the stock springs. Again, no floating, just one cycle and stuck to the road. I am struggling a little with the ride height though. It’s not obtuse but I was used to looking at the car with compressed bushings and a broken spring. That gave me somewhere close to a 1-1.25” drop compared to where I am now. Ride height is compounded by the tires the original owner chose, 245/55 fronts and 265/50 rears.
Overall I feel this car must be handling much better than when it was new but I never got to drive one back then. My only complaint is that there’s still more front roll than I would like when cornering at speed. The rear feels like it is on rails, but the front rolls out just a touch. I have no idea whose bars are on this thing but the front bar has the shim plates under the bushings and both bars seem to be solid. I’m trying to decide between finding stiffer bars or maybe cutting down some PI front springs to stiffen the ride- BBSS vs SBBS or somewhere in between. My research seems to indicate that the Marauder springs are the same rate as the PI of the same year but have a 1” shorter free length so cutting the PI down would increase spring rate. Until I sort that out, I am going to keep driving it and restoring it. In the meantime I’ll be working on putting together a big brake upgrade.
I thought I took one but I can’t find it so I will take a side shot of the car tomorrow so you can see the new ride height… just don’t judge me for the terrible looking brakes, they’re next. Thanks for all the information everyone has collected over the years. I’m late to the game but hopefully having just as much fun putting this car back on the road.
Well shoot, looks like I'm out of attachment space so I'll have to deal with all the pictures later.
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300A Black
Originally Posted by camelgrundle
