Suspension & Steering & Brakes

Ordered some disc brakes for the 'Stang, but once we propped up the car and took off the wheel, we found a few problems(As Always).

Thats a picture of the Drum brake off of the backplate. We have to take off the entire spindle, and replace it with the replacements in the disc brake kit. That is not the problem. When we looked at the steering/suspention components, we found something missing. Oddly enough, the shock tower is missing. The only thing suspending the car was the spring around the brackets! Weird, huh? We also need a new bushing for the idler arm, which is holding us back from taking off the old spindle and putting on the new one.

Sunday(Mar. 30, 2008), my uncle is going to come over to help me install all the parts we got. We're planning on installing new shocks on all 4 wheels, plus springs on the front end of the car. Hopefully, we'll be able to finish the disc brake installation, and then put on the new wheels/tires. Once we finish all that up, we'll move on to installing the Transmission cooling lines that I accidentally broke while taking the old radiator out, and hopefully install the new oil pan! Lots of stuff to do in one day, but I'm sure we can finish it all! I'll update on Sunday to show our progress!

Current Shocks/Springs(One shock is missing...must have rusted and fallen out!)

03/30/08 - My uncle and I replaced the shock and spring, and then put the spindle that came with the disc brake kit on. Looks pretty good!

05/04/08 - We took the spring, shock, and spindle out of the right side of the car. However, when we did so, we found that the spring seat bushings are shot...we checked the other side and apparently we didn't even notice that both sides are shot. There is some rust and cracking, so instead of trying to refurbish them and put new bushings, we are just going to buy new spring seats. I would like to be able to put these things in and not worry about them for awhile, so I'm going to pay the extra $50 for Prothane bushings. It'll set me back about $105 for a pair, but it'll save me in the long run - I don't want to shatter a shock or something!

05/08/08 - We just got in our new Prothane Spring Seat and Shock Insulators!

Springs, shocks, and new seats:

Entire setup above

9/13/08 - We've been working on this damn thing off and on for awhile. We got the oil pump and new oil pan installed, as well as the trans cooling lines and the disc brakes. We had some trouble starting it up, and turns out the fuel pump went bad. We replaced that and then the starter started acting up, but it ended up being a bad battery and when we replaced it it ran! However - one of the cooling lines is loose so its leeking tranny fluid, but thats an easy fix when we get some time.

Rear drums are ready for new wheels - I removed the Rust with a paint remover attached to a drill, and primed and painted the drums; Rust-Oleum Heavily Rusted Metal primer, followed by Rust-Oleum Metallic Finish grey paint.

So, with that done, I forgot I had bought new rear shocks, so I installed those, and you can see them above.

Entire look:

01/04/09 - Now we worked on the car this last sunday and didn't really get anywhere. In a way we did, but we didn't. We finally got the damn booster/master cylinder into the car. It doesn't seem like a pain, but it was.

The reason is, the car had these nuts that were welded on the inside of the firewall, for placement of a brake booster. The brake booster we bought had two 2" threaded rods, that screwed into the actual bracket, and then were held on and secured by nuts. This made putting the booster on very difficult, because it was very hard to align the bolt with the hole and then screw it in.

So what we ended up doing was drilling through the firewall bolts so that we could just put the booster into the car and then secure it using nuts. This took about 3 hours(Including the trip to autozone because we needed a break). So then I was physced that we would be able to move the car into the driveway and wash it, and then take it up and get the rims fitted with tires and have everything aligned. Well, as any restorer can expect, that wasn't the case.

We had to bring my uncle's dad(Who is a mechanic) to help us bend the lines from the junction block to the M/C. The first one went in no problem. Unfortunately, the second one kept giving us trouble. We had fit everything and made sure that we had the right supplies. Well, it ended up that we had put the wrong fittings into the junction block and M/C(We put the fitting that was supposed to go into the Junction block into the M/C and vice-versa), and then bent the lines accordingly.

To our surprise, one fitting was metric, and the other was standard, meaning that the standard one was a millimeter too big . The metric one fit into both the master cylinder and the junction block, but it was supposed to go into the M/C, and we put it into the junction block. After we beant the lines, we realized our mistake...maybe it will be able to stop this weekend! Going to get a new line to bend and we should be good for Sunday.

01/11/09 - We got the problem fitting on after fiddling with it for awhile. Began bleeding the brakes; right rear, left rear, oops! Someone had left the right front bleeder valve open. Closed it and began to bleed it, however, we soon discovered that it was leaking out of the rubber brake line. It turns out, we put the rubber brake line from the prebent lines to the caliper on wrong.

What we did was attached the new line to the existing line, creating too much slack and not allowing the rubber brake line to sit on the caliper as it should, which didn't allow the brass fittings to crush and seal the line to the caliper properly. Because we put it on wrong, not allowing it to sit on the caliper as needed, it ripped on the bottom.

We need to order a new line. Going to call SSBC on Wednesday with my Uncle's dad so we can talk to them about what we did wrong.