The Front Suspension

The fun begins! The first assembly is the front suspension.

Here's a shot of the bare frame, as Nate contemplates the massive job ahead of him.

Note the body buck to his right; Nate has just built it and the body is about to take up residence on it.

Here are some of the front suspension parts laid out on the workbench. At left are the lower control arms, and at right are the brake calipers, all from the Mustang.

In the rear center you can also see one of the fabricated upper control arms, which come with the FFR kit, and the Mustang's brake backing plates. All the Mustang parts are in amazingly good shape.

Here Nate does a trial fit of the Mustang steering rack into the chassis. It won't be bolted in till later.

Note the upper control arm attached to the chassis at left. This is the first part we installed.

Now we get down to business. Nate is installing the right-side lower control arm.

Note the pieces of plywood and the carriage bolt in the foreground. This is our first clever tool, Hine-Pennington Racing part number 00001.

This tool was necessary because the ears on the frame to which the control arms attach were located too closely together, and the control arm bushings wouldn't fit in between them. The tool spreads the ears apart so we can get the control arms in.

Here the front spindles are attached to the upper and lower control arms by their ball joints.

Note the bolts in the upper center of the spindle. These are part of a patented FFR idea, which uses a fabricated part to cleverly convert the Mustang strut-suspension spindle to one suitable for the Cobra's unequal-length control arm suspension. The FFR part is a welded fabrication made of heavy steel stock which simply bolts in place of the Mustang's strut and carries the upper ball joint.

By the way, these bolts, which are from the Mustang, caused us a few minutes of panic, because someone (probably me) had stashed them in the garage attic, in between some wall joists, while organizing the parts stash.

Later, when we needed them, we went through all the boxes but we couldn't find them (duh!). We made a panicky call to Mark Reynolds to get him to send some more. He did so, even though he was quite sure he'd shipped them.

Of course, five minutes after Mark mailed the replacements, we found them. Sorry, Mark!

Here's the whole spindle/control arm assembly. The block of wood at lower left is holding up the suspension to make it easier to work on.

Once we get the spring/damper unit in, we won't need ths.

Nate is greasing up the wheel bearings and putting them in the front brake rotors, which double as hubs.

Nate carefully masked the braking surfaces on the rotors and painted the rest with Eastwood brake caliper paint, so they wouldn't turn rusty orange the first time they get wet.

I did actually do a lot of the work on the steering, though. Here I've installed the steering rack and the three shafts (one from the Mustang, two from Borgesen via Breeze), along with the two pillow blocks (from FFR kit) which support the shafts.

I had to space the lower pillow block out with three washers per bolt, in order to allow the middle steering shaft to clear the frame in the footbox area.

And no, the steering wheel isn't supposed to be on yet, but I couldn't resist! Doesn't it look great? It sure was fun twiddling it to make the front brake discs steer!

As it turned out, the Mustang upper shaft, which Mark Reynolds had thoughtfully painted for us, was too large to fit into the middle shaft. It has to slide fairly freely so if you crash, it can telescope into the middle shaft so the steering wheel won't kill you.

Cale helped me a great deal by sanding off the paint so the upper shaft would fit properly. We coated it with anti-seize so it wouldn't rust and become immobile later. The whole operation required Cale to assemble and disassemble the shafts and upper pillow block several times (with much tapping and clanking in the vise) until he got the right fit. Finally, after he got a good fit, Cale reinstalled the shafts and pillow block.

Here you see Cale enjoying the fruits of his labor. See, didn't I tell you it was fun to have the steering wheel in place?