Have a 1960 Ford Falcon that needs the steering and suspension rebuilt. Upper and lower ball joints and the like are tough to come by and those out there cost and arm and a leg. But I do have a line in a 1963 Falcon parts car. My question is will the upper and lower control arms for a 1963 Falcon bolt right in to a 1960 Falcon. Have had much better luck finding ball joints and the like to rebuild 1963 control arms. thanks
It looks like a lot of the 60 Falcon chassis parts only fit 6o and 61 to a certain date in 61 or only fit 60 through 62. After you scroll a mile and a half down this page you find the steering and suspension parts listings. You don't have to buy from them but this link shows most of the chassis parts and tells what year fits. https://www.falconparts.com/
The short answer is no. The ‘63 is really a different car. The early Falcons proved to be too light duty for any performance so the Falcon platform started to be redesigned and beefed up with the “Futura”. For a ‘60 you have 3 main options.. Option 1...... Stock Resto/original power hop up Keep the original light duty stuff, rebuild it. Overhaul the and transmission, keep original wheels and tires maybe hop up the 144 with period speed stuff. ( hopping up these early little 6s is a sub topic) All in all pretty cool and it’s still a 60 Falcon. Option 2...... Upgrade the car with Futura type stuff. You have to understand the linage..... Falcon-Futura-Sprint-V8Mustang-Fairmont ^^^This is the general family. Upgrades are possible from these cars but it’s a lot of work Option 3..... Gasser straight axle or off topic front end upgrades requiring body/chassis mods..... Basically building a race car with a Falcon shell. A friend of mine who built a nice 60 used a Futura parts car. He said if he had to do it again, he would have built the 63 Futura instead.
The ball joints on a ‘60 Falcon are a different oddball size, so are hard to find. The ‘63 Falcon uses the larger more common balljoint. If you have a 63 parts car, use the spindles off of it when you put in the different control arms. Boom, easy as can be, and now you can actually order new parts that fit. No need to put in a gasser style front end or anything like that.
There's a way to use later Falcon/Mustang stuff. My brother has a '61 Falcon 2dr and he recently installed upgraded suspension parts for the later Falcons and Mustangs that he purchased from Opentracker Racing. He had to enlarge some holes and do some minor fitting, but it's all in there with adjustable coilovers and rides and handles great.
^^^^ Yep. I upgraded my '60 Falcon with take-off parts from a buddy's '65 Mustang when he went to better stuff. Everything, A-arms spindles, steering parts, the whole deal. Everything seemed to be just a little bit bigger so some holes were redrilled, etc. but it worked out great. I added some weld and some stiffeners to the spring towers and stuff while I was in there.
OK this is my official disclaimer. I am not a restorer and anything I say here can be disregarded. In the 90s I had a buddy buy a Fairlane. It was a 65 as I recall. He got it cheap because it has no front suspension, but the rest of the car was exquisite. I know it is a 65 and blah blah, a car is a car when one is talking mechanicals. Chasing front suspension became a real nightmare. He had a drop tube axle laying on the floor it was the right width. So we built sub structure to support springs. Shoved the axle under it and played with it until it set right. We did not build a "gasser" out of it. it set nice and low, drove good and was easy to find aftermarket bits and pieces for. Am I suggesting anyone reading this try this? I am not!!!!!! It was just a solution that a friend came up with so he could drive his old Ford.
I went with a Gateway Suspension strut conversion on my Cyclone. No upper control arm, stock lower arm an steering, I fabricated some adjustable strut rods and used a large early *ustang sway bar. This allowed me to section the shock towers allowing more space for the Cleveland headed 302. Mock up photos: LH side modified, RH side stock
The 65 Falcon v8 cars use all the same components as a 65 Mustang v8 car, with the exception of the steering center link. That center link is reproduced, and is probably the most expensive part if you want to end up with five lug wheels. The Mustang parts are all available from a multitude of vendors. All of these parts can be back fitted to the 61-64 Falcon, and a late Maverick five lug 8” rear end will give you five lug wheels at all four corners. lots of stories about how the 60-62 Falcons lacked the structure incorporated in the later v8 Falcons, but there are no known instances of these cars falling apart on the road. They’re no worse than the early Chevy II, of which thousands were upgraded to potent small block 327 and 350 power in just about every county in the country. A high school friend upgraded his hand me down 60 Falcon to 289 / 4 speed Mustang parts in about 1966, and a fellow I worked with in the seventies hot rodeo a brand new 61 Falcon with a 327 and four speed, using a bolt in 57 Ford 9”. Don’t recall what, if any front suspension upgrades he did at first, but it eventually ran V8 Mustang parts. Don’t confuse the Falcon and Fairlane in the pre 1966 era. They have zero suspension parts in common, although they look similar to the man on the street.
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