we got our rear end and springs in a few weeks ago which i had posted about a while back. over spring break my son has pretty much gutted the dash and firewall, we pulled engine and tranny, and steering column and box. friday morning we rolled it into the shop and left at noon to go to the Good Guys show at texas motor speedway. saturday morning it was on like donkey kong! chiseled rivits to take out factory frt engine crossmember. the trans crossmember was kind of a bear to do with the cab still on but got it out. removed the factory pedal mounts. had a hard time getting the brake pedal to come off the shaft but i won! we popped all the shackle mounts off for the frt suspension and rolled it out! my son was pretty excited!




a little goofing around...


rather than scab in spacers like i have seen others do, i decided to notch the frame. of course this will make it slightly lower too. you cant do very much though because of the radius arm part of the control arm.


i tacked some angle iron in that the crown vic bolts to. he is prepping for the welds.






i trimmed out the inner apron to clear the upper portion of the crossmember.


loving it!


once everything is just how we like it, we'll box in the frt rails.

 

Looks good MonKeep up the good work.

 

Great work! What front suspension is that?

 

What kind of shoes is your son wearing?

 

from a police'02 crown vic.

 

nike.......

 

We have engine and tranny hanging in place. Looks like fox body pan will fit for us with some slight massaging. Decided we are gonna make our own firewall and part of the floor. Floor has some rust anyways. Then again our whole cab has it from roof to rockers. Our steering column is mocked up as well as our shorty headers. Went to oreilly's and found some engine mounts for a dodge pick up/van that look promising. For under $8 each we'll find out. The original engine mount crossmember looks like we may be able to repurpose it as the tranny mount crossmember. Don't see any big snafus so far.

 

Father and Son working, learning, side by side. Its truely a beautiful thing, you are both very blessed, and talented, great work.

 

I thought it was the crown Vic, just didn't recognize the wheels. I'm looking at going this route still when the weather gets warmer up north and I can go get some parts at the local yard. Keep us updated with pictures also, would like to learn more about this setup.

 

Wheels are 18" mustang gt '05 up.

The only thing I am not sure about yet is we are not seeing any coil spring compression even with mine and his body weight standing on it. Police cruisers do have stouter springs. Not sure if we'll need to change them.

 

No experience. But from what I've read the police package springs ride rough due to the amount of weight needed, but you can easily change them. Only thing is it will also lower the truck some. Between sheetmetal, engine, etc you prob will have over 1000 pounds on those springs easy, so I wouldn't worry about compressing them yet.

 

I haven't read/found anything about alignment as far as caster. I've built it to allow "some" adjustment until we get everything where we want it. If you have much take to it you will have to compensate on the caster.

 

Ya should get that young man some knee pads to match his shoes. OUCH!!! that hurts me just seeing him on his knees on a concrete dirty shop floor.

 

We have them but he says his high school friend would give him a hard time about them. Kids these days....

 

Heck we would give him a hard time if you posted a pic of him wearing them.
So be a good dad " and post up a darn pic".