Big Boned - 1964 Ford Custom Galaxie
 

Hello all,
Here is my 1964 Ford Custom Galaxie. It's big, it's heavy and it is perfect for autocross and track days.:lostmarbles:
http://i63.tinypic.com/2w4ekr4.jpg

I bought it in Arizona in 2003 as little more than a shell and set out to make it road worthy and pretty enough to use for a wedding getaway car. After that it sat neglected while I was building and driving a Factory Five cobra.

http://suedespeed.com/storage/cache/...1531411021.jpg

Everything came full circle again in 2012, my wife and I had our first kid and the family no longer fit in the cobra. I really didn't have much of a plan besides doing big burnouts and ruining tires with it. That hasn't changed much, although I'm having fun autocrossing it.

http://suedespeed.com/storage/cache/...1531411019.jpg

I will get into updating this tread as time goes on, I'm hoping to make some significant handling upgrades over the winter. If time / money permits. Thanks for taking a look!

Very cool story! Have fun with it!

Awesome car--I love the pic with the just-married couple under a sign that says "liquor store open." That is perfect timing!

I was just watching video of the Goodwood Festival yesterday (mainly for the fire-breathing Holman-Moody Fairlane) that included a couple of really fast lightweight Galaxies. It's great stuff, if you haven't seen it.

I have the mini-version of this car!

Great name for it. :thumbsup:

Love it. Throwing that tank around the cones...That's fresh. Looks like fun! Can't wait too see what you'll do to it. Bring it on.

Regards

CurtiSS 69

Thanks for the encouragement guys, it is much appreciated.

Here are some photos of the front suspension I was running this past year.
http://home.suedespeed.com/storage/c...1519163419.jpg
http://home.suedespeed.com/storage/c...1519163420.jpg

In the rear a roll bar as well as Viking double adjustable shocks were added. Suprisingly 17/35/315s fit with little to no modifications. I'm hoping to do a 3 link with watts bar setup.
http://home.suedespeed.com/storage/c...1519237136.jpg

Welcome to the site! Looks like a fun project. Good luck with your plans.

I don't have allot of progress to report. I have 6 different spindles in my garage and have finally found one that I think will work. After attending Ron Sutton's class and learning about roll centers and scrub radius and many other things i had never thought about. I realize how much more there is to suspension then I could have imagined. I'm a beginner.
I've decided I'm going for a best effort autocross car. I'm not ready to put a cage in it and as such road course duty is out of the question.

Here are my goals for the front suspension.
-Lower car 2 inches currently 6
-Move wheels out 2 inches on each side (current setup DEEP in the wheel well)
-18x11 inch wheels on front with 6.6 inches back spacing (common mustang rear wheels)
-Minimize body roll I don't know enough about this yet to have a specific goal.
- optimize caster, camber gain, ackerman, bump steer.

Nice Galaxie! Are those the fatman control arms? Also, I'm interested in what offset, etc you're running to fit 315's? I have 275's on mine (although with a narrower wheel 15x8 and more sidewall bulge) and they barely clear.

Sweet another Galaxie! Nice looking car.

I am running the fatman control arms currently, I'm working on replacing them with a longer lower and adjustable upper.

The back wheels are 17x10.5 i want to say 1.1 inches of + offset. They are a really common and cheap mustang wheel (94-2004?) I also have a spacer installed. Sorry I'm going off of memory here it has been a while since i worked on anything back there. The tire is about a half inch from hitting the leaf springs. I have had some rubs in the wheel well on the outside while autocrossing. that was "adjusted". There is probably a good 1.5-2 inches of space between the quarter panel and the wheel well.
here are a few pics, I want to say that this was with a 1.5 inch spacer and I think I'm running a 1.25 now.

Great car.

nice job this weekend Mark looks like your changes are going the right direction! I thought I was the only one dumb enough to build a boat of a car and decide to autocross it too. lol. car looked great for such a tight track you are definitely getting it dialed in looking forward to another rematch .

Thanks Eric, I still have alot to do to stiffen things up. We really need a CAM sedan class! I was suprised at how well the tiny course flowed. looking forward to Powercruise in a few weeks, I need some nitrous to keep up with you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-jPpmXJWgI
Hill climb this past weekend. Pretty happy with taking 7th place. I ran into some trouble with my cooling system so I only got 2 timed runs in.

Searching through old posts and found this one. Not a lot of Galaxies so it's a shame the pictures don't work anymore. . I wonder if this is another dead project.

Not dead by any means. Photobucket is dead though. I moved most of the photos to www.suedespeed.com

Thanks, I will check out that link. Photobucket in deed sucks.

Were back! After the photobucket disaster I lost interest in keeping the forums updated. Found a decent way to host pictures.. on to the fun stuff.

Galaxies are not the lightest cars, You probably won't see it on Lateral-G list of best autocross platforms. To continue to improve performance the car needed to go on a serious diet. It didn't take long to find places to shave a few pounds. I built a hood which resulted in a loss of 25 lbs, then a front bumper and brackets, which was another 45 lbs savings. And I bought a trunk lid which was around 20 lbs savings.
http://suedespeed.com/storage/cache/...1531418168.jpg

http://suedespeed.com/storage/cache/...1531418169.jpg
http://home.suedespeed.com/storage/c...1519238578.jpg

We managed to win the Minnesota Autosports Club CAMT championship in 2017. I made it out to Goodguys in Des Moines, IA to see how it is done on a national level. All in all a good year. I plan on running the car in 2018 as is and hoping to get my other projects done for 2019.

Do you have any pics of making the molds or pulling molds from the car.
I also will be needing to reduce weight in large chunks when I start my build(FORD BASED).

I watched a few hundred hours of youtube videos before deciding to give it a go.

There is a DIY guy from Oz on YouTube with the username WJP004 who has several fiberglass videos covering exactly what you are looking for.

Thank you

Definitely a good resource, his approach is more realistic for the do it yourself-er. If you get tired of watching his fiberglass videos he has a series on how to build a house. Yep the whole thing. :cheers:

It's been over a year now. Getting ready for this season.

Have to share some media attention on Bangshift
https://bangshift.com/bangshiftapex/...-1964-galaxie/

been working on this hood for a bit now.
http://suedespeed.com/storage/cache/...1553545024.jpg

I love those hoods on Galaxie's