hello all it has been a few years since i have been on here because i had sold my car. but i now have another 64 falcon 2 door futura. it currently has a 260 and cruise-o-matic in it with an 8 inch 325 gear. But i am wanting to go the extreme side with the build of this car. I am looking at either doing a coyote engine or a supercharged 5.4 out of a lightning. with that being said im going to need stiffen up the car. with what all im wanting to do it brings up a few issues. In order to fit either engine in the car i will have to get rid of the shock towers which makes me think of trying to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. The easy solution is to put a mustang 2 front end under it but im thinking about trying to make a crown vic front end fit which is where the 2 birds thing fits in. If I use the crown vic i can use the whole frame and just shorten it to fit under the car. so i will have the nicer newer suspension, four link rear end, and the rigidity of a full frame car. and have 4 wheel disc brakes. What I am wondering is if any one has done anything like this to a falcon and will my idea work? i am going to go take some measurements off of a vic frame later this week. i do know that i always have the option of making my own frame for it but i dont feel that my skill set is good enough for that part of it. If anyone has had any experience with this or has any suggestions or as another idea for this please feel free to chime in. Thank you Millz 64 p.s. I included some pics just because
Thank You. and i have posted this on a falcon site. i just remember there being a lot of falcon guy on here a few years ago. thought some of them maybe able to help
I think the Crown Vic frame is going to be too wide to fit under the Falcon. I know of a guy who put a '61 Unibody on a Merc Marauder frame. He had clearance issues with the turn radius. Had to make the front wheel openings bigger. He had some other issues too, can't remember what they were though.
I'm a huge fan of Chassis Swaps, and it's not that difficult. You should be able to find specs for the Trac and Wheelbase. I'm currently looking at putting a Lincoln under a '61 Ford UniBody Pickup. The tough thing is using a full frame on a unibody car. I'd cut the firewall and floor out, and graft in the new. Check out my website for the 1950 Chevy PU I did. I'd be interested in buying your 5-bolt 3-speed Trans. for my '62 Fairlane!
Look up a post on here "Falcons Done Right". You may get some ideas from that. The Crown Vic is not a good donor for what you want to do. '65-66 Mustang suspension upgrades can be applied to your Falcon, they're essentially the same thing.
Thanks for the info guys and I know the crown Vic is a lot bigger car but I can shorten and narrow it to work I was thinking? But the turning radius thing I will defiantly have to look into. And I'm wanting to do the more modern suspension for the fact of they are easier to get parts for and normally safer. And if a full frame idea won't work that well I'm also thinking about just doing a subframe connectors with an 8 or 10 point cage. But i don't think that will keep the car from twisting with around 400 horse and 400 torque. I attached a picture of the subframe connectors That I will mostly likely make a copy of to fit my car. Do you think this would be enough to stiffen it up?
Easier to get parts for? Safer? I'm not buying either reason. It's not hard or expensive to get Falcon parts or MII parts. I've seen two Coyote swaps into Mustangs and both went with MII setups. By the time you shorten, narrow, and fit the unibody over that frame, you could have rebuilt an entire car in less time.
Mustang 2 is an option that I am considering. I'm just worried about the heavier 400 horse engine will twist the car
Tube chassis. There are plenty of manufacturers out there that will make one. That's the route I'd take. The coyote is very wide so even a Crites Restoration shock tower mod kit would most likely not even give you the room you need. As far as twisting the car, there are plenty of crites converted FE cars out there running so I think with a little strengthening(subframe connectors, cage, etc...) you'd be fine. You'll know really quick if you didn't stiffen enough when the rear window pops out under a hard launch......
A buddy of mine is running a 408 stroker Cleveland with a toploader in a '65 Mustang fastback and street races it a bit. Heidt's MII with Custom converted wide Mopar leaf springs out back. No stock frame problems for him.
I'm going to say that having someone build be a chasis is most likely going to be out of budget. And I don't have the skill set enough for that and get all of the geometry right for the suspension but if connectors and a cage will be enough I'll just mustang 2 the front which will give me plenty of room up front. Thank you for ur help I'll look into some fe builds on these cars and see how they are holding up
With a proper set of sub frame connectors 400HP is not an issue for a Falcon. The bigger problem is the lack of strength in the front end when going to MII, especially with more HP. Remember Ford designed these cars to carry the weight and torsional forces from the front end to be spit between the frame rails and the shock towers. When you cut out the towers, you lose more than 50% of the strength, and those sheet metal fillers do not bring it back. Now a million folks are going to say "I did it and it's fine" - and maybe it is for them. But I can tell you I have seen Falcons (and Mustang's) with MII's twist the front end enough that the fenders go out of whack, and on convertibles, the windshield break! The right thing to do is A), brace the stock frames rails to the sub frame connectors along with plating them a bit to the torque box/toe board area, and B) Add some triangulated down bras from the upper firewall to the top of the frame rails (similar to what is done on early Nova's). If you do this right, you will have a very stiff and happy platform.
Awesome that's makes perfect sense and is what I am afraid of thank you! You done happen to have any pictures of this done to a mustang or falcon to get and idea of how to make it look right?
You were talking about putting a cage in the car. If you run tubes through the firewall and down to the lower frame you'll restore the strength lost from removing the towers.
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