Contender for the worst MII install ever

I belive this is in my top five all time worst installations ever for the IFS of any sort.

What you are looking at is a Studebaker truck that a customer picked up at an auction. It looked decent on the outside even though a bit "street roddy". Drove like ****, really..

 

Doesn't look that bad, right?

Well what you are looking at is a Speedway crossmember kit for a 35-40 Ford frame. The uprights of the crossmember were hacked off with a torch and attached to what ever they could on the frame. They left the frame as is but added various and ***orted angle and plate to make things sturdy. Then to finish the job they installed the spring towers on backwards. This made for some interesting driving charicteristics and alignment specs.

It had about a degree of negative caster and two degrees of positive camber. With completly backward anti-dive it made for unusual dips and bobs just driving around in the parking lot!

 

Here is what we did to clean things up a bit.





and then took care of the rear suspension too.

 

Very nicely done! Is that one of your crossmembers? I thought you were big on the Dodge Dakota IFS.

 

Looks really nice now Steve...

 

jeez you do nice work.

 

wow when i saw the first mustang 2 setup i thought if looked pretty ****py. Then seeing how you did it the old setup looks like a pile of puke. Looks really nice wish I could do stuff like that!

 

Nice work !

 

Oh I am, trust me if this truck came in clean I would have talked him into it. Truthfully this is for annother shop in town here. We take on a bit of work like this from time to time.

The Mustang II is a bit small for this truck. I ended up adding a two inch rack extender to the right side and built custom arms that are 1" longer per side. Not my ideal set up but should be safe and drive a hell of a lot better than when he dropped it off.

 

Those engine mounts were nice though.....

 

I thew up a little in my mouth with that first pic.............yeow!

 

I don't know...I think I liked it better before...

Mike

 

very nice... your work and not the original.... I have a '37 Chevy coming into the shop with a messed up MII... I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with it.

 

Is there really such a thing a s a good "M2" ? LOL

 

Remember me????

The first pics are why most stock Mustang II installations are a PoS.

Your installation isn't Mustang II. It's an independent front suspension with about the only thing in common with a MII is the steering gear.

Your technical knowledge about the suspension design and outstanding fabrication skills makes YOUR suspension installation super.

Obviously, we both agree on that the stock MII installation looks like a backyard Cob Job by Bubba & Company.

I've seen a lot worse. At least the steering u-joints were "almost" in phase.

Those stock bottom MII strut rods mount on the frame in a location that transmits road shock right through to the driver and p***enger feet. How that improves the ride quality leaves me puzzled. More suspension compliance there than in a half dozen of the front ends that you installed.

 

HEY HEY !!
We would have measured it with a yardstick, marked it with chalk and cut it with a torch!!! And it still would have looked better than that!!!

 

Yeah I remember my sparring partner

I wish I would have taken some better before pictures of a Cord 810 Sedan we are doing. It came in with a stock Mustang II crossmember grafted into the stock frame and had first generation Nova spindles and brakes installed! The installer leveled out the upper control arm mount and couldn't get anything better than 2 degrees of negative camber!



You can see the lack of Ackerman by using these spindles.



http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/bb93/ELpolacko/1936 Cord/

 

Well I certainly feel better about what was under my 40 p/u when I bought it. Actually it didn't ride bad at all, and when you consider that the shocks were angled in such a way that the suspension was bottomed against the side of the shock and had rubbed holes in the side of the shock, it was pretty bad. Oh well just rub money on it for awhile and it's all better now.

 

Yikes!!!!!!!!!!!

And the fix is exactly why El Polacko gets to do his magic install of the Dakota IFS on my F1.

Truck is on jackstands with NO suspension under it, and I'm taking off useless brackets and mounts, filling holes and straightening the whoop-dee-dos in the frame rails. Progress is being made.

And my daughter gave me a bench grinder for Christmas.

 

Looks good Steve, do you charge more to "fix" than do the upgrade in the first place.

What's the deal with the forward part of the Cord frame, weird??

 

Cord's are front wheel drive. That huge bulkhead/crossmember is where the swing arms were attached. If you look close inside the chanel you can still see the large roller/needle bearing for the inside mounting point. The outside bolted to the outer end, sorta-kinda like an IRS Volkswagen or Porsche or Datsun 510.

 

On the 1st pic, I was like WTF? Its going the wrong direction.....WOW!
And it looks like the motor would have more or less been the structural member keeping the tops of the frame rails from folding in on themselves.

WOW, fabrication......its not for dummies.

 

Very nice welds on those top hats...Good Job

 

Any pics of the completed install on the Stude?

 

Who gives a **** about the crossmsmber install(looks awesome by the way)?That adjustable trans crossmember is PURE GENIUS!!! KICK ***!!!!!

 

That must be one of those overpriced 1500 dollar jobs I was just reading about.

Killer work. I love good looking Ch***is work.

 

I thought that's how all the cool kids where doin' it now-a-days?!?

 

Wow. What else can I say......

 

I am 150% sure you were making a smart *** remark about the thread I made earlier. If you knew wtf you were talking about, you would know I thought LABOR wise 1500 was too much, and I personally STILL think it is. So be it, ***** all you want, just remember things can get pretty infected if you don't pull your ******* out every so often.

 

Nice work Steve, I also at forst was like "WTF?" when viewing the original install. Backwards is pretty funny in hindsight, probably was way scary to drive.