Wheels, Suspension, Brakes, Drivetrain

WHEELS 

Always a personal choice but when I bought my wheels in 2005, the choice was far more limited than it is now, especially in 20s. My aim was a simple thin 5 spoke for relative lightness and these Weld Evo 20" rims leapt off the page at me. I'm not sure that in this day and age with greater choice, I'd necessarily choose them again but they remain fairly unique on the S197 and that's probably because I've had them a long time! The rims are 9" on the front and 10.5" on the rear and they wear 275/35 tyres but really need wider on the back. The failings of the manufacturer can be read at the bottom of the page.

Improving the suspension is a MUST on the Mustang GT. In stock form, it's soft and lacks overall damping control. A suspension swop is pretty straightforward to transform your car from the photo on the left to the photo on the right (excuse the bricks, it's a technique to allow the jack under the car). For me, the choice of Tokico D-Specs was simple - all the tuners seemed to be using them and it paid off. I paired them with Roush blue springs, a combination that provides a good ride and excellent handling:

FRONT SUSPENSION

Tokico D-Specs; Roush springs; Steeda strut top brace; BMR A-arm brace.

 
Firstly, lift the car and remove the front wheels and support the car on jack stands. Don't have the car too high as you'll need to reach the top of the struts.

Lift the hood. The struts are attached to the body by 4 nuts. Undo and remove all 4 leaving the main centre nut secure. The strut is supported under the arch so it's not going to fall out. The strut is a complete unit so the spring isn't going to fire anywhere either.

Locate the two main bolts (left photo) at the bottom of the strut and loosen them. Ford have made this easy by having interference arms on one bolt so you only ever need one socket/spanner.

At the back of the strut is a 10mm bolt holding the brake pipe. Remove this. Unclip the ABS wire from the strut which is a push-in clip.

Unbolt the top bolt of the vertical aluminium rod connecting the strut to the lower sway bar end link. Push the rod back supporting the lower suspension arm as the strut will now drop.

You need to support the brake and lower arm. I used a bungee cord to take the weight. Now remove the lower two bolts and lift and manoeuvre the strut out carefully. This shows the wheel well with the strut removed.

With the strut unit now removed, you need a set of spring compressors which you need to position evenly on either side of the spring so you can compress the spring down. When the spring becomes loose in it's seat, you can then unbolt the main nut holding the spring retaining cap on. Once you remove that cap, remove the spring and slowly and evenly unwind the spring compressors to release the spring.

IMPORTANT Note the plastic protective bellows and the bump stop on the strut. Note which way up the bump stop fits. You need to transfer both these items to the new struts.

On the Ford spring, you will see a rubber strip on the base which is glued on but easily pulls off. I attached this to the Roush spring and then compressed the Roush springs ready to fit to the new Tokico struts.

Once the rubber strip, bump stop and bellows have been transferred onto the new piston, place the new compressed spring over the piston rod and fit the spring hat and tighten up the retaining nut. Final torquing of this nut will be done on the car when the strut is refitted. Locate the spring in the recess on the hat and the base:

IMPORTANT Before decompressing the spring, make sure the notch on the hat shown here is facing outwards towards you in line with the flange where the two main bolts go.

In the words of all the great manuals, refitting is a reversal of removal. Just manoeuvre the strut back into the strut tower and feed the bolts though (notch outwards remember)and tighten them loosely then reattach the two main bolts, the brake line bolt, the aluminium rod and the ABS clip. It should look like this:

Torque all the bolts to the recommended settings. Now move to the top of the strut. Tighten the 4 retaining nuts. This photo shows the Steeda billet strut brace towers so don't worry yours doesn't look the same. Similarly for the red caps here which are for the adjustable shocks.

The most important part now is to torque the top spring nut down to the recommended torque. You need a torque wrench for this as it's critical to avoid damaging the piston rod.

REAR SUSPENSION

Tokico D-Specs; Roush springs; Metco Billet LCAs 

The first job here is to get the rear end high enough in the air to allow plenty of room for leverage and to allow the rear axle freedom to raise and lower. For this purpose, I used axle stands on the strengthening rail either side just in front of the splash guards but CHOCK THE FRONT WHEELS FIRST. I used a piece of carpet on each stand to prevent any damage. Nice view of my Corsa X-pipe from here too!

If you're fitting new control arms (I'm fitting Metco billet items), you need to disconnect the handbrake cable which is easily done by levering up the connector with a screwdriver. That's the weedy stock control arm behind and the billet one behind that.

Now chock all the wheels so the axle/body don't move in relation to one another and do one side at a time so the axle doesn't move too far. If it does, the job will take you hours realigning the holes. Unbolt the stock control arm from the axle and the body. Ford use interference bars on the captive nuts here too so one 18mm socket is all you need.

This is the reason you're swopping out the flimsy stock control arms:

Bolt in the Metco billet control arms the correct way with the alloy spacers on the axle end and the wider part on the inside so the new control arm is straight and then bolt it up loosely as this has to be done with the weight of the car on them.

Having done both sides, you need to lower the car onto it's wheels to tighten the control arms and to disconnect the shocks without the axle plummeting to the ground. This is a pain in the butt. Torque all bolts to 95lb/ft on billet arms which is LESS THAN the Ford recommended torque (127lb/ft). Grease the zerk fittings with a small amount of silicone white grease.
<i>Note: These Metco arms creaked and groaned for 3 years to the point where I was going to junk them. I contacted Metco who 3 YEARS ON still offered me complete support. After a replacement set of Delrin bushings were despatched, I stripped the arms off and found that the problem was distorted inner sleeves. Metco were on the case and despatched new sleeves FOC and this has resolved the problem. 5 STARS for customer service! </i>

Hey and while you're there, why not paint that rear axle! You can see the BMR A-arm brace at the front in red.

Open the trunk and remove the carpet and locate the shock retaining bolts. You may need a stool to reach. Using the correct spanners, unbolt them.

Unbolt the shocks at the rear axle and remove them. They are separate from the springs so this is easily done. Now raise the car again sufficiently to allow the axle to drop enough for the stock springs to be pulled out from their turrets. The springs do not require compressing as the weight of the car being taken off them will decompress them. You can see the difference between the stock spring and the Roush spring clearly. Replace the stock springs with the lowering springs making sure you use the stock rubber cushion on the axle mount. Note that afterwards I experienced a squeaking. On checking under the car, it seemed the top rubber seat for the spring had distorted slightly due to the spring not being bang in the middle. I readjusted this so the spring sat centrally in the turret.

NOTE: Shave the rear bump stops by using a hacksaw to remove the top mushroom.

Next, take the new rear dampers and offer them up. You may have to lower the car slightly to locate the dampers. Secure them to the back axle and then tighten the top mounts to the specified torque, taking care not to damage the threads.

As a finishing touch and because I didn't have time to paint the axle, I sprayed it as I went along with Dinitrol rust treatment spray. Not exactly pretty but it will keep the rust at bay.

Below you see her sitting on the Tokico D-Spec shocks and struts, Roush lowering springs and sporting the Weld Evo Forgestar 20" Wheels wrapped in Dunlop Powermaxx 275/30 rubber. Does it look better than stock? Does Kiera Knightley look better naked?

Caliper Paint

 
I bought this caliper paint off ebay - it's a no-mix paint and I hand-painted the calipers after a thorough cleaning. Like any job, you wish you hadn't started and once you do one, you still have 3 more to go but once done, I think it's worth it!

After noticing that the acorn lug-nuts retained water which leads to light corrrosion in the lug-nut recesses, I swopped them out for fluted security nuts. Because the replacement rear wheels (see below) are a thicker design, the front and rear lug nut recesses are now different so I get a flush front/protruding rear effect - but I quite like it:

The only thing you should consider is that in oblique shots like the one below, the calipers reflect in chrome wheels which can upset the composition of a moody shot! In retrospect, I think I should have done them black or silver - obne day I'll get round to re-doing them.

Earl's Braided Brake Lines

I bought a set of these back in 2005 when they first launched them onto the market but because of design and development delays, I didn't get them until 2006. No rush as it took me until June 2009 to get round to fitting them!

DON'T BUY WELD WHEELS - A LESSON LEARNT.
The Weld Evo Forgestar wheels were ordered late 2005, advertised as a 2005 Mustang fitment so I had no fear about importing them at a cost of $2200 plus shipping plus import duty (10%) plus VAT (17.5% on everything). The Forgestars were the first batch of this design made for the 2005 'Stang but when I fitted the rear wheels, they clamped the brakes on. I contacted Weld and they were aware of the problem but hadn't told me! They didn't give a stuff about the the problem and any decent manufacturer would have recalled them. Weld foisted spacers on me(that took until July 2006) but I think the stress was too much on the wheels because the chrome cracked like an eggshell. The "5 year warranted" but barely lasted 6 months defective wheels were returned to the US dealer at a cost of £138 and Weld, now owned by American Racing, s-l-o-w-l-y approved replacements. I had to get them back to the UK at a cost of £205 having been without wheels for 2 months. So the defect meant I finally got correct offset wheels 2 years later. Even then Weld had a sting in the tail - they'd modified the design! Bigger centres, thicker spokes (self-evidently strengthening the design) and a different centre cap! So they still don't match!
I would recommend Weld like I'd recommend castor oil for anyone with a loose bowel complaint. AVOID! The shots below show the old wheels in all their flaking glory....