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Be sure to take photos. I am really interested in how yours turns out. I like the idea of having adjustability of ride height.
Larry
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Will do. I was already planning on taking a bunch of pix. Hope to get to it next week which means I probably won't get to it tell the week after 
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Daze wrote:
Hope to get to it next week which means I probably won't get to it tell the week after
wiser words were never spoken. FINALLY got to work on the front end today. only got one side torn down, but in doing so I was able to figure out what I need to do to make it work and answer a lot of question.
First of all the over all length of the new shock is about 2" shorter than the KYB performance shock I had installed.
Believe it or not, but this should be about perfect. The KYB shock had to be compressed about 1" to install it. The other 1" should be made up by mounting the bottom of the shock to a reinforcement plate attached to the top of the LCA rather than the bottom like Ford originally had it.
Second, the new QA1 shock has about 1" less stroke than the KYB due to an internal and external bumper each about 1/2" thick. again not an issue because as i said before "The KYB shock had to be compressed about 1" to install it." Plus now I have the advantage of built in bumpering in the shock. I will get back at it tomorrow and see if I can get things mocked up. More to come. I will keep you posted as I know more.
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This is going to work!!! Short of something being weird when I get it all put pack together, this install should be a piece of cake.
Just to get an idea of what I was working with I bolted the shock directly to the OEM shock mount. As was mentioned before this is not going to be strong enough to hold the full spring load. Ford used a much larger area to hold the front weight of the car.
After the initial mockup I extended the coil over set up to max and compared it to the uncompressed OEM spring. They are almost the same height. This is just a rough comparison, I am sure the springs will compress differently but it is good to know that things are similar. 
End to end the springs are almost the same The QA1 springs are slightly smaller (total diameter) but not enough to cause issues, as you will see in the pic after this one.
As mentioned above the springs are close enough in size to work, the QA1 coil fits beautifully in the Galaxie spring pocket.
Now to some actual fabrication. I wanted to reinforce the LCA and put the force of the suspension in the same place Ford designed it to go in. To that end I needed something to fill the grove where the spring sat. To achieve this I cut the flattened top off of an extra set of OEM galaxie springs I had (didn't want to use the actual springs from the car incase this project failed and I had to go back to stock.) The result is a round piece of steel that fits nice in the OEM pocket AND gives me a flat place to weld two cross plates to. 
These cross plates were fabbed out of 1/4" by 2" bar stock. I still need to drill them and do a little more fitting before I can weld them to the "spring" seat. I also plan on using spacers between the 1/4" plate and the OEM mounting holes so that the 1/4" plate cant move.
When its all said and done the mount should look something like this.
The OEM holes will also need to be drilled out to 3/8" This is a mod I'm not worried about if for some reason I needed to go back to the stock configuration I could easily weld a couple nuts to the top side of the LCA.
So what do you think?? Anything you would have done differently, or think I should change??
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If the bottom end of the shock doesn't extend further than the 1/4" mounts you fabbed, then I guess I'd be thinking about making a single piece round spacer for taking up the distance between your mounts and the lca. That would be the ideal distribution. But, my guess is that the shock does extend further than 1/4", so, I'm wondering what the spacers will look like. Some lesser OD fabbing like your mounts? Or a single piece with a hole cut out like a washer?
This is a great mod, and I'm looking forward to seeing and hearing about the end result - I'm very tempted to do the same treatment to my '61. Not sure of how much more or less weight mine would be supporting, but I'm headed for the 460-based engine route.
Please take a pic of the spacers when you fab them. Thanks!
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I'm wondering what the spacers will look like. Some lesser OD fabbing like your mounts? Or a single piece with a hole cut out like a washer?
Well first I need to decide if I want to center the shock mount in the coil piece, OR use the OEM shock mount location which is closer to the ball joint. If I go with the OEM mounting location I will need to use washers to go around the raised threaded holes in the LCA. If I center the mounting holes I will use tubing between the LCA and the plates. I am leaning toward centering the shock, but If I do that I will still drill the holes in the 1/4" plate for the OEM mounts that way I can bolt the mount down in a second location.
Please take a pic of the spacers when you fab them. Thanks!
Will do.
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I like what I am seeing. I like your solution using the spring and welding the plates to that. Easy way to go back if you want. I also looking forward to hearing about how this all turns out. Please keep us informed. Let me know about the adjustability of the height of the front end. I am very interested.
Larry
Last edited by jrdufresne (April 14, 2014 10:20 am)
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I like your solution using the spring and welding the plates to that. Easy way to go back if you want.
Larry
In most cases that is how I approach mods. I like the challenge of working within the stock configuration, not being an engineer I try to use the OEM parts as much as possible as a guide for strength and design, and I like having a fall back position, not just for me but for any future owner of this car. There is nothing harder than trying to return something to OEM or a similar configuration when someone has heavily modified things cut weld and so on. I even took that approach when I installed a Jaguar IRS in my 64.5 Mustang The cradle I designed to hold the rear end bolts into the OEM leaf spring mounting locations.
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I did the coil over adjustables on the front of my Stang I built. They handel the 351W well and gave me a great stance.
Yes that's the garage I keep the Stang in!
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I did the coil over adjustable on the front of my Stang I built.
Did you do the coil overs that bolt to the UCA in place of the spring perch, spring and shock or did you do the set up where the coil over passes through the UCA and bolts to the LCA?? I am building a custom coil over set up for my Mustang that goes to the LCA.
Here is a rough mock up
here is the heavier brackets I designed for the install
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