The accompanying pics show a car that some of you who attended the Deuce Days last summer here in Victoria may remember seeing. Not too long after, a friend that I don't see too much of anymore bought the car and while driving it up-island had the right front suspension let go. It dug in and the car flipped. Looking at the one pic, it appears to me that the anchoring point for the mount of the lower control arm for the IFS was a little too sparse for my liking. I have not seen the car in person and only recently found out that it was my friend who was the owner. I have never built an early car with IFS but would be interested in what you guys who are builders think. Regards, Dave.
ifs...................that is the problem, the car just didnt like it....maybe someone will buy the body and make it a REAL hotrod.....hahaha
Guess it had one of those "just for show" mustang II suspension kits under it. They have been discussed numerous times on here before. Sorry it had to happen to such a nice looking car but I hope your buddy is OK.
As far as I know he is OK. One of my sons was talking online to his son who sent the pics. Yes, that wouldn't have happened with a beam axle setup.
No wonder you guys are always down on IFS around here. Look at how narrow the bottom mounts are in comparison to the width of the bottom A-Frame. That is a very poorly engineered set-up to say the least. BUT, even at that, I cannot imagine that it just snapped off under normal driving conditions. The missing mount looks to have been wrenched in half by the lever action of the A-Frame, which leads me to think (and this is just a WAG here) that the RF wheel may have dropped off the road into the grassy shoulder (as evidenced by the grass and dirt hung all over that side of the undercarriage). The increased torque load on the A-Frame from plowing through the softer ground was too much for the mount and it failed. IMO a properly triangulated IFS will not fail any sooner than the locating linkages of a beam axle under similar circumstances. All that said, regardless of why this happened, it blows hard that such a beautiful automobile ended up shiny side down (not to mention that the soft and squishy occupants might have been damaged in the process). Hopefully both the auto and the owner can be repaired and put back into service.
call out the meatwagon Who decide to use MII suspension back in the 70's anyways those cars sucked ass! Not a Good Idea
Thought for sure this would of been a rusty, unsafe, broke in the middle, old rat piece of poop. I hope your friend is allright.
Actually, if you look at the undercarriage shot, the entire suspension peeled off the frame. Wouldn't have mattered if they were using Vette IFS, because the actual suspension parts did not fail. Their weak mounting points did. This failure points to the installer.
Dam that had to be one hell of a ride..sucks about the font end falure. sure hope the riders are ok. cars can be fixed, or replaced..people..NOT
Sheeze! Hope he's alright. Hey, I agree, not knowing what caused the accident I would say the wheel/tire either came off or the driver dropped the tire over the shoulder using his cell phone. So, if the accident is as the poster stated, what are the legal ramifications for the builder? What if you built that car in your garage with the best knowledge you had of building cars for a hobby?
With the wide base of the lower control arm pivots and what looks to be about a 3" wide mounting point on the crossmember there was a lot of leverage on the mounting point if, in fact, the car did put a wheel off the pavement to initiate the incident. A few years ago we fixed a Willys from a reasonably well known east coast shop. Pretty much the same scenaro with less spectacular results. In that case the front wheel obviously hit a large chuckhole, trying to move the wheel back and the leverage on the lower control arm bent the mounts on the crossmember. The lower ball joint moved back about 3" and the bottom mount was torn nearly completely out of the shock. The mounts on the crossmember did not break but were severely bent due to a lack of support because of the original design. We straightened everything, boxed and gusseted it where necessary (both sides) and it was OK from then out. The worst thing about that case was that we fixed the car for the new owner who had purchased it over the internet and had it shipped to Indiana. After it arrived he took it for a drive and said that it drove funny. I know that the motto should be "caveat emptor" but the previous owner was either terminally stupid or a jerk as the car had about 20 degrees negative castor on that side. We also fixed a panhard bar that ran downhill at about a 40 degree angle at ride height and was attached to brackets that were chicken shit welded to the frame. The brackets are now in our "Hall of Shame" drawer. Once that was done we had to cut a hole in the floor to be able to fill the master cylinder as the lid just barely came off under the floor. I guess that we could have filled it with a squeeze bottle and hose but the owner decided that he would like to be able to check it without putting the car on a lift (what a concept). Again this was from a shop that were proud enough to put their i.d. tag on the firewall. Roo
If infact that it was not the driver that inadvertenly caused this by dropping the RH front tire off the road the only mechanical cause that makes sense is the ball joint conimg out of the lower control arm. There are two types of ball joints commonly used in after market MII type front suspensions. One is a press in the other screws in. needlwss to say the screw in type is the prefered one. If the press in lower ball joint is not completely pressed in it can come out. I have seen this twice and the results are pretty damaging.
Many thanks for all your comments guys! If I happen to run into my friend I'll get an update and post it. Regards, Dave.
Hopefully your buddy is ok and it does suck about the car. But it amazes me at times cause cars like this one are the last-ones you'd expect to see sh!t like this happen to and at the same shows are the 'clapped out sh!tboxes' with cob welded suspension buckets of bolts actually driving 55+ on the roads with open drive lines..scary shit and those are the cars i'd expect to see like this....It just doesnt make sense...
I wonder if it was a ball joint breaking or coming loose that caused that wreck. It does seem like a weak design the way those lower a-arms are attached to the crossmember. It doesn't look much like a Mustang II suspension though. A real Mustang II has narrow lower control arms and some strut rods trailing back. Also a Mustang II has the rack in front of the crossmember. This is a rear steer setup. Something pretty violent must have happened though to rip the whole spindle of like that. I hope your friend's okay. The car looks better than I thought it would after reading it had flipped. Hope it's salvageable. It's a sad thing seeing a car like that lying on its side, knowing how much work went into building it.
please keep us updated! bummer that happened regardless what type of car it was. insurance report should tell quite a story.
Not to split hairs here, but between the "rack behind" set up and the lower control arms, that isn't mustang II. it is however, CRAP. the control arm being supported by the middle of the arm-pointless. Toe and caster are going to naturally attempt to remove it simply by driving it in a straight line. what's more...it looks to me like even if efforts had been made to get a much wider mounting point on there, it would have eventually failed. it's a "look at me!" kit. not a "drive me to alaska and back" kit.
Glad to hear your friend is ok. That looks like a Total Cost Involved IFS front on a stock type frame (as opposed to a TCI frame). It looks like the crossmember is somewhat narrower where the lower controll arm mount is than I remember the TCI stuff being. With as many of that type of setup that they have sold, I would have to believe they would have been sued out of existence if they were truly that flimsy. Makes me think it might be someone's attmpt to copy a TCI maybe? Or have some of you hard of TCI's stuff doing this and I just missed it? AV8 Dave, do you have any biger / closer up pictures of the suspension (like the one with the car still on it's side)?
that makes me re-think the mounting points i wanted to do on my IFS... wow... i think i might just stick with a dropped solid axle...
This is exactly the kind of thing I have been warning about. I look at this partictular picture and see by the twist it looks like brakeing loads are the culprit. You can see where the mount is, it's twisted counter clockwise. That is exactly one of the forces created by stoping the car. Likewise blunt force from a road deformity could have accelerated the dammage.
The Jalopy Journal
