Technical How to Flip Uprights on 49-53 Shoebox Ford Drop Hack

So I don't have the money to spend 800$ on dropped uprights so I thought about it a little bit and also heard of people "flipping the uprights". whenever I saw this I would only see people flip the upright and spindle assembly from side to side and bend the steering arm and also in turn have to bend the upright to get rid of the camber. The thrust bearing also was positioned on the bottom of the spindle rendering it useless.

I am probably not the first person to do this but I haven't seen it done this way exactly and this is the way I figured out the best way to do it without much fabrication. the steering arm has to be profiled a bit and depending on what springs you run you might have to notch the frame for the tie rods. ill update when I know. ill be running Aerostar springs.

materials needed
Kingpin kit from Mac's $50.00
Camber kit from Shoebox Central $50.00. Or you could make your own. looks simple enough.

Here's the video explaining my process. Hope this helps you penny pinchers!

 

The real problem solver is the camber kit that allows for the upright flip to work without heating and bending the upright. Overall hood video though going through the process.

Sent from my SM-G950U using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

yeah man absolutely that camber kit!

 

Excellent video.

 

What about the steering arms, they should be dropped as well??

 

I'm going to be buying fatman arms when I do mine

 

So I did the flip the same way you did today. I also have the brackets. Problem is, the camber adjustment brackets won't allow the upper arm to move in towards the engine enough. The spacers that the kit comes with can be cut down about half the size but that's not enough. Best I can get is 3ﾟof positive camber.

 

Thank you for this info Stefan, I was planning on giving this a shot but glad I found out beforehand.

 

Anytime man.

 

Am I missing something here. You say the spacers can be cut down. Surely if you have positive camber you need more shimming to move the upper control arm shaft nearer the engine to achieve a zero degrees camber.

 

You are indeed missing something...
If you add more shims to the alignment bracket, it moves the upper arm further out from the engine bay, towards the outside. Of course that creates MORE positive camber.
The way the brackets work look like this (driver side looking from the front)...L¤}
That's the L bracket, spacer then upper arm shaft, from left to right. If you add more shims between between the the L bracket and upper arm shaft it pushes it further out towards the tire creating more positive camber.
See what I'm saying

 

Thanks for that StefanS. My mistake I can see that I was looking a it the wrong way round, thinking that the spring tower was the engine side of the arm and not the wheel side. I take it if no spacers between the shaft and the bracket this is still not enough to get the right camber.

 

You'd pretty much have to move the upper arm shaft to the opposite side of the bracket. That would put the upright inside the frame so that's a no go. What I ended up doing is drilling the lower crossmember arm bolt holes exactly 1" towards the outside of the originals and it gave me perfect camber. Unfortunately I don't own or know anybody that owns a torch to heat the steering arms and bend them down so I couldn't go that route

 

Thanks StefanS for that info. Life a learning curve and I learned something today from you. Glad you was able to solve the problem of positive camber. Cheers Paul

 

You have the camber plates on the wrong way if you have to cut down the spacer to add neg camber. You should have to add shims to get more neg camber or cut down the spacers if you needed pos.

 

They only go on one way my friend

 

Has anyone done this lately?

 

I flipped mine back over and made a set of boogie blocks or whatever they're called.

 

Can you explain what boogie blocks are? I'm not all that smart about this lowering stuff but I think the look is great and would like to get my 50 ford down some. I plan to buy a set of Aerostar springs and that should lower it about 2" but I am not sure that would even be noticeable. Thank you for your response.





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Have a look at this video I made.