C Body front subframe swap to 50s Mopar chassis

[CBODY67]

The Volare front end is the simplest swap because the entire suspension system is contained in one unit. The criticism of this suspension manly come from one person, Rick Ehrenberg, and I think he's just being too much of a stickler engineer on the subject. He doesn't like it because the bars don't travel in the same arc as the control arms. It's not ideal on paper, but works just fine in the real world. \
Jeff

The service manager at the local Chrysler dealership termed it "a three-sway-bar" suspension. Each front wheel had the end of a sway bar attached to it, anchored on the other side of the car. Then the normal sway bar between the two lower control arms. My term is "bent bar", by comparison. I suspect that whatever differences in the arcs are compensated for by the heavy rubber bushings where the bent-bars attach to the lower control arms.

That set-up can look a bit unusual, but it allows for torsion bars to be on ANY wheelbase of vehicle. That module (front subframe) has all of the modern stuff attached to it, too. I kind of suspect that if Ford or GM had done it, it would have been under a lot more vehicles (after they got through wringing-out every last 1/10th cent of production cost).

Enjoy!
CBODY67

 

[traintech55]

I have owned many F,M,J, body vehicles. I only had one that I had to change the K frame in. It was a 1979 Lebron wagon with well over 200,00 miles on it. I did the complete change out in 3. Hours.

 

[bigmoparjeff]

By observation, the earlier Crown Vics, which used wheel bearings, had normal type rwd-offset wheels. The later ones, apparently went to front bearing hubs (as all fwd cars are) and that's when the fwd-style "flat" wheels came into use. Bodies looked pretty much the same, but the wheels were different. That change is when their "wire mag" alloy wheels went away.

Enjoy!
CBODY67

Ford went from a traditional, serviceable front wheel bearing to a sealed hub in '91 on the Lincoln and '92 on the Ford & Mercury, but the suspension that people are using for swaps came later on. Ford completely redesigned the front and rear suspensions for the Panther bodies, I believe mainly to address handling complaints with the police cars. Even though the Fords were very similar to the B body GM's in design, size and weight, they just didn't handle nearly as well, and cops ended up in a lot of high speed wrecks after departments had to switch to Fords after GM ceased production of full size RWD cars. Ford made the big changes around 2001, adding an aluminum bolt on sub frame along with rack & pinion steering to the front, and moving the rear suspension lower control arms outboard of the frame rails. After moving the suspension points as far outward as possible, front wheel drive style rims were needed to clear the new suspension system. The bolt on nature of the new front suspension makes it a popular swap, especially on Ford F100 pickups. The downside is that even on the wide pickup truck it really moves the wheels outward, requiring very shallow front rims to keep the wheels inside the fenders.




Jeff