Looking for suggestions, 1962 Thunderbird

[Great White]

First, the intended use for this car is weekend cruising (maybe a couple hundred miles at most) and the occational timed road rally or a targa event (like targa newfoundland).

Its mostly just for fun with me and the wife.

That understood, I'm a little back and forth on suspension. Its a big heavy car (4000+ lbs) and I can't decide how to build it.

Weight loss is in its future, but I'm budget constrained so it will have to be done in stages.

I have to do underbody rust repair, so I'm planning some torsional stiffening to the unibody as I go.

It will have to suffer with the stock front suspension configuration (ie: spring over top A arm and lower radius arms) and the rear leaf spring suspension for a while. To be honest, I don't think I want to get into cutting out spring towers and welding in suspensions anyways.

What I have in my mind is getting the front and rear suspension to stay in as consistent an alignment as possible and improve what it is as much as possible.

I'm getting 245/45 R18's under it. Not much rubber for so much weight but its all I've got to work with. I can't change that rubber for a different size either, its what I have to work with for now.

The car is as low as its going to go, road conditions are bad enough to leave it alone. Winter andnfrost heave makes roads a nightmare at the best of times. Besides, a 1962 TBird is pretty low to start with.

I've been around the block a couple times in my head with panhard bars/ watts links/sway bars, but I'm not sure which way to go in the rear.

The front I think will be OK in the interim with some unibody bracing and a decent rebuild/respring. Plans are eventually for a rack and pinion conversion, but that's a ways off.

I'm quiet experienced in drivetrain and to a bit lesser extent, body work and interior. Electronics are easy peasy, but not much of that in a 1962 ford.

But suspension is something I've either replaced or repaired. Not a lot of alterations other than bolt on. I do have understanding of caster, camber, trail, scrub radius, KIA, etc and what moving each in a direction does to the car/handling. But not much in the way of altering it other than what can be done with factory adjustments or bolt on parts (like: fox chassis caster plates, etc).

Anyways, you can probably see I'm a bit turned around. I'm just to close to the issue I think.

Any suggestions on how to deal with the suspension given the intended use and budget constraints?

[Josh@Ridetech]

Hey BJ,

Depending on what you're looking to do, we've had several guys use our kit in the front and rear. I know you said the road conditions there aren't good but I thought I'd throw out some suggestions. Here is a link that shows what all was done on this '62.

http://www.ridetech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3012&highlight=thunderbird&page=2

Thanks,

Josh

[Great White]

Thanks for the link.

I'm not really looking for air suspension though. More looking for handling improvements.

Still, interesting stuff there.

Cheers.

[marolf101x]

I understand you may not be interested in air suspension, but your previous post basically states, "air suspension is not a handling improvement".
I think you'll find a number of people here that will disagree with that statement.

Regardless of what spring is holding the vehicle up, handling improvements can come from:
-lower ride height
-increased spring rate
-better shock valving
-larger sway bars
-wider, low profile, high performance tires
-improved geometry

As the shocks we use in our coil overs are the exact same shocks we use in our Shockwaves, I see no reason why you couldn't fit coil overs to that car.
We know the shock length and mounting required. All we need to know are some weights and motion ratios so we can plug it into our spring rate calculator to determine a starting point on coil rates:
http://www.ridetech.com/tech/spring-rate-calculator/
That would put the coil overs "over" the leaf springs in the rear for simple installation. However, this is difficult to tune as you are dealing with 2 spring rates. You also don't have terribly great lateral location of the rear with only leaf springs.
As I'm not aware of any "bolt-in" suspension options for the T-Birds I would suggest a weld in triangulated 4-link. This will provide improved (and adjustable if you use this axle bracket: http://www.ridetech.com/store/weld-on-axle-bracket-for-ridetech-4-link.html) suspension geometry with rear diff lateral location provided by the triangulation, which is often easier to package than a watts or panhard:
http://www.ridetech.com/store/weld-in-air4link-triangulated.html

I would suggest larger sway bars to go with your already sourced 18's.

For the front general geometry rules apply:
-decrease bumpsteer as much as possible
-increase caster as much as possible
-increase static camber and camber gain to match the set up you have chosen (however far the car rolls, you need to match the camber gain to keep the tire on the ground)
-increase bushing material durometer so as to keep the suspension from going where it shouldn't