I am looking to upgrade the front suspension, steering, and brakes on my 41 Chevy Coupe. I have heard that the Mustang II front end kit is a good way to go. The problem is I am working on a really tight budget and do not want to spend the $1700+ on a Heidt's Kit. I found a 1974 Mustang II that I can get for $200. Is the OEM front end basically the same as what you would get in one of the kits? Is this a good way to go? Thank you for your help
You can use the arms and spindles and springs and all of that, but you will still need to buy a crossmember unless you are a real capable fabricator. Myself, I buy the lower arms aftermarket too to do away with the strut rods The factory MII brakes are pretty puny also. An upgrade is a good idea. All of this makes the hub to hub kits much closer in cost than you might at first realize. Last one I did, I bought MII donor parts for 100. Fatmans crossmember and lower arms, ECI brake brackets, local parts store brake parts, and rebuilt the factory upper arms before install with new bushings and ball joints. New steering rack from Speedway also. I wound up maybe saving 400 bucks over buying a complete package.
Maybe a considerable amount of extra work to make a satisfactory installation. You need to consider replacing (possibly) worn out bushing, ball joints, etc. Probably the most important, is the overall width with your wheels and tires mounted. On my 37 Ford, I had to use shorter upper and lower control arms, to pull the tires in for turning space (my car sits pretty low). I couldn't use the stock control arms because of that. That being said, I'd surely install the unit WITH the strut bar, which mounts to the lower control arm. Just makes for a real sturdy front end, plus when you hit a pot hole, you'll be glad you beefed it up. Stu
I have been doing this for 30 years now and Ayers is rite about cost, once you buy a wrecking yard clip, rebuild it, buy bigger brakes, etc. you might as well bite the bullet and buy an aftermarket kit. I personally don't like the ride of the Mustang II BUT prefer a Chevelle, Camaro, Nova clip in a fat fenders car/truck. The Mustang II handles and rides like a Go Cart, the Chevelle type with a bigger sway bar, power steering etc. is the way to go on your type car. JMO
i'm not a big fan of using the original mustang II crossmember and never used one myself , but i have seen it done where it came out ok. the first mustang II ifs swaps all used the original crossmembers. Chuck Lomardo of California Street Rods claims to be the first to do so. i recall a tech article many years ago in a magazine (maybe Hot rod, rod & custom, or ?) in which he installed an original crossmember in a `37 chevy. maybe someone here will recall the article and post it here. as ayers garage said....with the hub to hub kits available i'm not sure if there is any savings
My 40 Mercury had the stock Mustang II suspension and brakes. It was OK but the stock struts where starting to rip out their rear mounting pivots. Went to the Heidt's economy A arms and the 11 inch brake kit. It made a huge difference in the way it rides and especially the braking. The 9 inch brakes are marginal at best. I have sway bars front and rear too. It handles about like a early Mustang GT. Ride is a little rough on bad roads. Great on the highway.
Having installed a good number of MII frontends in my shop I agree with these guys. The front steering,suspension and brakes are no place to "cheap out" The one thing I recomend is to use a bolt on crossmember kit. I installed a total of two on the Chevy top hat style frame. Its just not a good idea to be welding a heavy guage crossmember to a much thinner frame like you have in a Chevy of that era. On the two I did both developed cracks in the frame around the welds-not cool. Just my 2cents. Normal Norman
I agree with this... except my experience was on a 52 Chevy sedan instead of the Merc. For what it's worth, I installed the stock Ford crossmember in my 52. I re-bushed and re-ball-jointed everything out of a 77 MII that I got for free. I still had $600+ in installing that front end even though I used mostly free parts. The only new items I used were the bushing/ball joint kit and ECI's big brake brackets (not the whole kit). Everything else was either used as-is from my Dad's parts pile, or I took those parts and used them as cores at the local parts counter. Oh, and I had the junkyard Monte Carlo rotors turned. Keep in mind that I did EVERYTHING myself, and I had some pretty fancy tools & resources at my disposal (working at my Dad's street rod shop that shared a building with a machine shop), and it still cost me that much. Also keep in mind that soon after I got the car back on the road, I had to replace my junkyard steering rack, and the MII sway bar never fit right, so I had to upgrade to the Chassis Engineering part, and since I used the stock lower arms + strut rods, they don't really fit the Chevy frames properly, so I had to step up to the Heidt's triangular lower arms. There are A LOT of hidden costs in using the "used" parts vs. saving up and doing it right the first time. And for more perspective, this was all in 1997 or 98. Prices have gone up since then. Now to put my dinero where I put my dinner: I'm saving up for a MII-type kit for my Fleetline as we speak.
Look into chassis engineerings bolt in kit. A friend put this in his 41 chevy coupe. And over the years the only problem he had was a broken upper ball joint. And they took care of this for him.
I did a combination of used a-arms and spindles with a new crossmember and would probably do a hub to hub kit next time. I also bought new 5-bolt 9" rotors, calipers, shocks, and power rack. I don't feel I saved that much money plus I still need to put new bushings in the current stock A-arms once I clean them up for paint. You definitely got to watch the price of the kits though. They really vary in features and cost. My .02 Jeremy
I've bought the Heidt's suspension about 5-6 years ago for a 65 nova I had,and resent i have bought a TCI one for my 51 chevy. They are all pretty much the same. I would definetly recommend the lower a-arm version. The one mistake I did on the first kit was that I got greedy with cutting the springs to lower the car. After the car sat on it's own weight for a few weeks while I was work on other stuff. The spring started to settle. By the time I got the car started up and I was preparing to go for a test drive. The cross member was half inch of the ground and when I jumped in the car it made contact. I was scrappin in my drive way. Bought new spring and was told by the Heidt's tech to install spring before cutting them. let them break in first. so I did and after a couple days I started to feel a bounce on the springs drove around the block a couple times then I removed springs so I can cut to the ride hight that I wanted.
I recommend the Heidt's crossmember and a Mustang II donor front end. I did my 40 Ford and it wasnt nearly as expensive as the fabricated A arm job even after ball joint replacement. I used a manual rack. You can use Monarch/Granada brakes --- 5 lugs and if memory is correct 11" rotors. Stops really well. This setup went right on but I had the body off and turned everything over to weld it up ... Joe
I just used one of the speedway motors crossmembers and I liked it alot. It was cheaper than the name brands as well. Reminded me of a Heidts knock off. They also have adapters for larger brakes for the mustang ii spindles with different price ranges depending on how complete a kit you want. I had good luck using that as well. I also would not be afraid to go with the manual steering either. I used that set up on my 47 chevy and was pleased with it.
My experience: I put the whole works from a 45,000 mile wrecked MII in my 36 Ford, including the stock x-member. Cost $150. I put 52,000 miles on the car and only replaced the rack. Sure would have been nice to have the big brakes, though. Current ride: 36 Nash. Once again, started with a complete donor car clip. Widened the stock X-member and put 1" Granada rotors with big brakes. Rebuilt/re-bushed upper and lower control arms - TOTAL PAIN IN THE ASS - won't do that again. Total cost - about $600. 30,000 trouble-free miles so far. Current project - 37 Lincoln Zephyr - all MII Fatman in the front. Cost - $1700. More valuable car justifies the expense. My advice - if you can find low mileage stock MII stuff, then you can be rolling cheap - but do upgrade to the big brakes. There's nothing wrong with the stock cross-member, it's just not real pretty. Stay away from rusty high mileage junk, you'll be in it for a grand before you know it. In that case a $300 aftermarket x-member make sense.
The bolt in crossmembers from Chassis Engineernig are great. Shop around for other poeples cast offs too, Like the people who think that the stock arms are no good, may just give your theirs...People who just went to the big brakes, may want to get rid of the old ones, someone changing to dropped spindles, no longer need their original ones, etc, etc. I pieced mine together, and really enjoy the ride. Pay the money for a crossmember, it is well worth it.
for the price ur going to pay replacing bushing ,ball joints and all the other crap youll be spending some cash anyway.. just piece it together so its not such a big hit. you dont want the stock control arms and brakes from a MII on a car that weights so much more..Unless u dont care about stopping? haha
I bought a crossmember from Welder Series and really liked the price, projects not on the road yet but I am really happy with it so far...
I am trying to find the crossmember from an 03-07 Police Interceptor Crown Vic. It is a bit wide, but perfect for my application. Look here: http://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/716058-buildup-06-crown-vic-front-suspension-into-67-f100.html
Those Crown Vic units are wide even for a square body Ford pickup from what I've seen but I wish I was able to use one. That setup looks like it would work great. Right now the plan is to run a Welder Series crossmember with Stock A arms and struts on the 48. Bigger brakes and that's about it. Ford used to sell the Stock front Crossmember across the counter for right at 100 bucks in the 70's and early 80's. Almost every Cobra Kit car built in that era used that crossmember and the stock MII suspension pieces. True bushings and ball joints cost a few bucks but the stock pieces are pretty tough and the failures when running the stock pieces are usually attributed to how they were installed rather then the pieces them selves. Just to see what the cost for ball joints and bushings is for the stock setup I searched the O'Reiley site, Schucks here locally and depending on which pieces you use the cost would run between about 225 and 400 for bushings and balljoints. <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
I put the whole mustang II crossmember( out of a mustang not bought out of a catalogue) & strut rods(made my own brackets) in mine back in 1992. I rebuilt it in 2001 with all new ball joints& a frame bushings. All my welds have held up excellent and it has a bunch of miles & 1 accident on it so far.
Has anyone else had long term success or failure with welding in crossmembers to the "top hat" style chevy frames? There is not a single welded part on mine as it came from Chevy, only rivets and bolts attach everything. Maybe there's a reason for that. The CE Engineering piece looks like a well thought out alternative to the weld in units.
I used a Fatman crossmember, then added junkyard suspension, and Fatman also has brackets that allow you to install Camaro rotors and calipers. However, if you can weld, check out the Welder's Series kits, very economical, and if you become a hamb Member, you get a nice discount. The other nice thing about a MII is that you can upgrade one component at a time, and the sky's the limit.
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