You guys are all so helpful. So I have a favor to ask. Remind me the next time I decide to put a volare front end under a 65 chevy truck, to blow my brains out first. Lol.
Surprised you were able to find an Aspen/Volare front end to start with. Most of those cars rusted to oblivion unless they spent their whole lives in the desert southwest, and they've long been regarded as crusher food.
I made the mistake of buying a new Volare, back in '76. It was by far the worst car I ever owned, highlights by the miserable font end.
I'd have to agree. It took me a long time to install as it was my first attempt at doing anything besides basic modifications, but once I got her dialed in, my 55 F-100 drove waaaaay better than the I beam suspension. No regrets. What kind of problems are you having?
My '53 Ranch Wagon has a Volare set up and it seems fine. Two problems though: It needs a drop spindle(I've got the bars cranked down too soft, just to get my preferred ride height) and I don't see an easy way to add Air Ride. I might have to swap to a Mustang II set up to make the car be all it can be.
A 73-87 GM half ton front suspension bolts in and gives disc brakes, P/S, sway bars, cheap rebuild parts, and all the suspension mods you could want like drop spindles and air bags easily. I realize it may be too late for your truck, but you could get a nice ride and low stance with the newer 73-87 crossmember and suspension. Not trying to kick you in the nuts, just information for any others with these trucks.
The only trouble with that is that if you're gonna lower the truck, the lower suspension mounts hang down far enough that it can be a real pain in the **** in real world driving. I've seen a couple of trucks clipped just to get away from this. Larry T
Totally different. your T bars run straight back under the car to the trans crossmember, but the Volare and the like use transverse T bars that go from side to side and are ***embled as part of the front crossmember. You can pull the crossmember and the T bars come out with it.
http://www.nolimit.net/ These guys used to take your lower a arms and raise the ball joint so you could have the low ride and travel for ride comfort. They did my 55 ford panel and it works great They called it volare a arms modification vm-10 it was 125.00 in 99 plus shipping and tax
for bushings one source is thru partsgeek.com-have Volare under '50 Chevy PU-works fine, but would rather a Must II because of all of the aftermarket parts avilable
"Bonus Built" was used in the '48 - '52 Ford truck ads. That's what folks call 'em - probably because it's the less gay sounding between it and "Million Dollar Cab" (Ford bragged that it spent over a million dollars on it's first postwar cab, in design, comfort, etc). There's even a social group here: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/group.php?groupid=10 ~Jason
Drove the **** out of my truck with a Volare subframe with no problems. Excellent ride quality and handling. Bushings and such were available at the local O'reilly(used an old hand that knew what he was doing). Used Fat Man dropped spindles. The only objection I had was that replacement parts are pricy. Later, ****
Thanks all for the input. The worst part was linking up the steering. I stayed after work this week and finally have a truck with steering. That series of truck is so wide that the volare box sits 6" to the right of the column. On effies it seems as though it is a much staighter shot. I have cliiped a few trucks with camaro's and always hated cutting the truck in half. The volare seemed like a straight forward aproach. Further more I was able to drop the truck a foot or better, add disk brakes and power steering. After looking into the later model chevy truck suspension I hate how the lower control arm mounts plow into the ground on a radical drop. Plus once it is bolted in i would need spindles, springs, dropped conrol arms, and a shock relocation kit.
Any of you guys that have used the fatman drop spindles on a volare. What upper and lower ball joints did you guys use? I ordered a replacement kits from PST and the taper on the ball joints is wrong for the fatman drop spindles. Any insight???
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