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After a little work we had the drivetrain out and intact, ready to live life in another Ford car some day. Engine bay looked pretty cleared out at this point, but we needed to keep going.
One of the more industrious Mustang parts hustlers in Texas - who had bought a nasty Fox Mustang chassis from me before - came and got all of this drivetrain as well as all of the suspension / brake / bodywork shown below.
REMOVE SUSPENSION, PREP FOR STRUT CONVERSION
During the same week as the drivetrain work above happened the aftermarket front suspension and brake parts came off this car for the last time.
The "double A-arm" front suspension in the 1st gen Mustangs has an unusual layout. First, the spring sits ABOVE the upper control arm, which gobbles up a LOT of inboard wheel room up front. Then there are the two lower control arms, which includes the "Tension Control" rod. It really is a hot mess, but hey, it was designed almost 60 years ago. All of that came off, including the "spring pocket" above the control arm. We aren't going back with anything like this.
The main lateral control arm's lower mount is a wrap-around structure that forms the inner shock towers as well as the lower structure, shown above right. These were original welded bits held in place with dozens of tack welds. Ford didn't really do corrosion protection all that well back in the 1960s, but this car spent most of its life in Texas so the raw metal underneath was mostly just dusted with surface rust.
Evan fought this battle for a couple of days: finding and marking spot welds, center punching them, then drilling them out. The spot weld cutter gave way to a unibit for most of this work. The inner shock tower structure that tack welds on was removed but the "strut tower" structure was left in place. If we needed the room for the LS swap we could take out some of this to make room (we didn't need to).
At this point we mocked up the AJE crossmember with some clamps. There was some fore-aft adjustment we could use on the crossmember if we needed to alter the engine placement or control arm pickup points. But those front "TC" rod mounts had to go next.
Even used more spot weld drilling and a little prybar work to get those brackets out of the way. The lower radiator support was still in good shape, too.
There was some inner shock tower "rings" that were removed (on box above right) but I missed that step. We had more work planned for the strut towers later. The welded structures were all kept to show the customer, then made their way to the scrap metal bin.
Jason, Myles and I looked at the placement of the crossmember and figured the LS engine would "tell us" if we needed to move this forward, to clear oil pans or alter the control arm placement. For now we left it where AJE intended.
Since the old front suspension was now "gone for good" our crew made some "skates" that bolted to the front frame rails. These help us roll the car around the shop between stations and tasks. We do not have an unlimited number of work bays so we juggle cars around between fab areas, 2 and 4 post lifts, and "storage" areas.
To help expedite the sale of the old suspension (and to make room in our shop) I posted the control arms, steering rack, spindles, brakes, engine and trans in January of 2020.
The same guy bought all of it plus the steel front fenders and the cowl hood, which was a nice haul of parts for him. I wasn't a huge fan of the cowl hood and the owner agreed - we will stick with a simple OEM style hood (but likely composite). The sale of all of these parts funded the build for several months, too.
ROLL CAGE, GUTTED INTERIOR, & COMPOSITE DOORS
This '67 came into our shop with a 4-point roll bar welded in place, but built around the stock interior. We were looking at possibly just repairing some of the design aspects that we felt were incorrect or less safe than they could be.
For a dual purpose street/track car, a properly designed 4-point roll bar (or "half cage") is a great alternative for track use. It gives you some rollover protection plus a solid place to to hang shoulder harnesses from, all
without putting steel tubes next to your head, arms and legs - which can do more damage than good when street driving without a helmet / 6-point harness. But this one had some issues...
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