Hey everyone. Need a little help here. I gotta 1955 F1 with a Cordoba/Gibbons front suspension on it. It was installed when I got the truck and I was just wondering if anyone had this set-up. It rode a but rough before and I am starting to redo a bunch of things. Im thinking of putting polyurethane bushings and getting the drop spindles from fatman for it since it would be a bit cheaper than getting a MII for it. I also have a problem with an extreme angle of my steering shaft

Should I do all this or just get a MII for my F1.

Any suggestions would be great!!

Eddie

 

This was considered one of the best swaps for the F100s in the day. I don't know if you would gain much replacing it with an MII.

 

I have one in my '56. This will surely get me run off this site, but I gotta admit, it rides better and steers better than my '96 Taurus did. My wife hated to go anywhere in my truck when I had the stock front end, even with spring leaves removed and nylon strips between the leaves. It was very choppy riding.
It was pretty easy to install, but the instructions say, even bolting it in, you should go ahead and weld it, too.

 

If you do decide to swap it out for a MII, I'll be happy to buy that Gibbon cross member from you.

 

Another thing I like about the Gibbon kit is the engine offset and moving the front wheels forward have been taken care of.
My problem was spending several days drilling, punching, grinding and the obligatory cussing removing the front tranny mount and finding out that because of the size and weight of the engine( I have about 1" of clearance between my firewall and bell housing) I still had to pull the eng and tranny together!

 

I have over 80K running this setup. I have not had any trouble since I got a p/s fluid cooler.

 

is the gibbons still being made? my last account of it was in the midwest and then i think they moved to one of the carolinas.

 

Not available, I talked to the people that bought Gibbon about a month ago.

 

Urethane will not give you a better ride, but a more firm ride. MII will not be a better ride at all. The dropped spindles will get you lower but may ride even more firm after you raise the torsion bars to get it off the ground. The shafts to the box can be re-routed using 1 more borgeson joint and different lengths of the shaft. Send pics of the shaft so we could offer more help. I rode in a 56 with the same set up and it rides way better than the Mii IMO.
Jon

 

Have one in my 52 F1 since about 1990. It rides way better than stock. The F1 is two inches narrower than the F100 so the center link had to be shortened which means I can't use the sway bar so it doesn't corner as well as the F100 installation. The nice thing is the whole suspension is much more substantial than the Mustang II.

 

What is the difference between a "Cordoba-Gibbons" IFS and a Volare IFS? From what I could gather to date, Gibbons made an installation kit for a stock Chrysler front end...is there more to it than that?

 

The Gibbons IFS uses the parallel torsion bar suspension from the Cordoba. The Volare usually refers to the transverse mounted torsion bars.

 

Thanks Vern! Since the torsion bars run back along the motor/frame is there any drawbacks to this system with frame mods or loss of real estate around the exhaust/steering/trans, etc?

 

Can't help there. I've never used one but I've seen a few installed. I don't know if the ones I saw were the Gibbons kit or a custom install by the owner but when you look at one installed it looks a lot more complicated than the transverse bar Volare...maybe it isn't, but it looks that way. I defer to someone who has done one...

 

I used the Cordoba set up without the Gibbons kit, it went farily smooth, I fabbed my own rear x-member and installed the original sockets in it. heres a link to some pics.

https://www.ford-trucks.com/user_gal...=44238&width=0