'95 F-150 track ready street beast

[Sbeck09]

I hate that things are moving so slowly with this project at the moment, but I guess that's just how it goes.

I was hoping my last ditch effort to make the spindles work right would be shown here. I'm at a point where I know I could make these strut spindles work, but it's taking too much time. We will break 100 degrees already this week here in AZ and I wanted to have already started this engine. Ugh.



See it's close, but I was having trouble accurately aligning the upper and lower holes at identical angles and heights. I'm keeping them on the shelf and will one day make it work just to say I can. These will never be run on this truck. So if you were sticking around for that....sorry.

Yesterday morning I finally brought the engine home!



See it's there! My motorsports addiction has resulted in the car and truck living outside so all the toys can sleep safe and sound inside. Haha. I know some of you are the same way.

As you can see compared to how it looked when ready for pick up at the builder, I got right to work bolting goodies on. Mainly to seal up any openings from dust and bugs while it waits for me to finish the frame.



DUDE...I love this engine! What do you guys think of the color scheme and parts choice?

Specs:
408w
Stock 95 351w roller block bored .020 over
Scat forged 4" stroke crank
Compstar rods
Icon Pistons
ARP hardware throughout
Cammotion solid roller cam (I believe it's .611 lift, but I need to verify specs)
Comp Cams 1.6 roller rockers with their valve springs and tool steel retainers
RHS heads with full port job
Ferrea valves
Holley Hi Ram port matched to the heads

There isn't much info out there on this exact combo, but I did find a company in California that ran this intake on a slightly milder 408w and got over 600hp at the crank on 91 fuel. My heads and cam outflow theirs. I will be tuned to run both 91 and E85. I am sure that will be more than enough to help me waste tires on the street and pull hard on the track.

Spindles are due around Tuesday of this week and you guys all know I'll update accordingly.

[rixtrix1]

Have you checked the anti-dive geometry of your design as it appears the front of the upper arm is much lower than the rear, opposite of most suspensions. Certainly don't want it trying to bottom the suspension under braking. I may be in left field on this, but it just looks odd to me otherwise it's areally neat project!

[Sbeck09]

Have you checked the anti-dive geometry of your design as it appears the front of the upper arm is much lower than the rear, opposite of most suspensions. Certainly don't want it trying to bottom the suspension under braking. I may be in left field on this, but it just looks odd to me otherwise it's areally neat project!

Good eye. It's actually sitting level in the photo, but I will be changing the shims to add in some anti-dive. I set the arm level just for simplicity when I was mocking everything up. Once I get the new spindles I can better see what I need to change. Any idea on how to determine how much anti-dive to add?

[rixtrix1]

It's really hard to say without knowing all your suspension mounting points and other measurements and entering them into a program like Performance Trends, but most of the aftermarket drilled upper arm mounting plates come with the holes at 2 degrees up in front.

[cornfedbill]

With the slotted plates you can make some adjustments once the suspension is complete. You can add or decrease your anti-dive with slugs in the holes of the plates to some degree.

[Sbeck09]

It's really hard to say without knowing all your suspension mounting points and other measurements and entering them into a program like Performance Trends, but most of the aftermarket drilled upper arm mounting plates come with the holes at 2 degrees up in front.

Good to know, thanks! I figured I should weld the plates on with the arms at a neutral setting and was planning to dial in about 4 degrees with the slugs. Maybe I'll need less than I thought.

With the slotted plates you can make some adjustments once the suspension is complete. You can add or decrease your anti-dive with slugs in the holes of the plates to some degree.

Exactly. I figured out that I can add almost 7 degrees if I want. I love having adjustable slugs. Makes these changes so easy.

[Sbeck09]

Got a delivery at the beginning of the week that should get us moving quickly in the right direction.

New ridetech spindles with a Wilwood 14" 6 piston brake/hub kit. It all looks gorgeous and I should have done this months ago. Oh well, I'm just that stubborn.



I must point out that the uniballs will no longer be used (sorry Daniel) which also means that I get the redo the lower arms again! FML

The bright side, If you look at the image below you will see that The new spindles changed the angle of my lower arm in a good way. So when It's all done I can technically go up to an inch lower than I planned without totally ruining my roll center. For now this is about where it will be as the uniball holds the arm roughly where the ball joint will.





These will have to come back apart as I didn't have wheel bearing grease handy and everything is only hand tight. I needed to take some measurements so I can get parts coming to wrap this install up.

Since these spindles are based on the GM A body, do any of you have a good suggestion for which steering arm I should buy? And no...I'm no buying some super duper billet arms. This purchase wounded the budget pretty badly.

[Sbeck09]

Need some help real quick. Hopefully I'm overthinking again.

I was double checking my engine and transmission to verify everything is level with them so I can officially check that off the list of things to do while I wait for suspension parts and the driveshaft. After fighting all afternoon I KNOW my engine is level from side to side, but the transmission leans 2 degrees to the driver's side. Is this normal? I always thought the transmission should be level with the engine side to side. Every time I try to lift the tranny up to level it forces the engine out of level (makes sense due to them being bolted together). Do I need to not care if the transmission is perfectly level as long as it's close?

[Sbeck09]

Shoutout to Modern Driveline for quickly connecting me to someone that could answer my question above. I spoke to one of the engineers and he said my Quicktime bell housing is designed to slightly rotate my transmission. Apparently it's something that has been done with T5 type transmissions for years and there is situations where he has seen 7-17 degrees of rotation! He also said he was surprised I caught it as most people don't.

So basically I wasted 3 hours of my Sunday trying to fix a problem that didn't need to be fixed. Glad that's over. Now I can weld my mount right back where it was.

[Sbeck09]

Been a busy week and I was also waiting on parts, but i have a bit of an update finally.



Obviously I've had these for a couple weeks now, but here they are loosely assembled. I still need to make sure I put it together correctly before I pack the hubs with grease and put them together for real. And for anyone running GM type spindles that wants a 5x4.5 wheel these wilwood spindles are awesome so far.



Here is the new sleeve for the lower ball joints I'll need to run now (Sorry Daniel, I know we liked the uniball idea). I've gone with nicer aftermarket ball joints for a 1st gen Camaro. It's nice to finally be using off-the-shelf options.



Only a couple hours of work to get them in. Ignore the gap on one side. I'll be redoing that. I couldn't get the ball joints pressed in since I don't have a press. I'll go get one this week. I'm going to be needing it for a few things soon.

Before I started on the arms loosely bolted on my Tru Turn steering arms. They look and feel great (what do I know. lol) but there is a geometry issue that now need to resolve, not to mention I have to figure out how to adapt A Body tie rods to this mustang rack. This should be fun. I'm open to suggestions.



Fingers crossed for more progress sooner rather than later.

[Sbeck09]

Wow what a week! It's been crazy for me and I'd say it's all been good. Some of it is a distraction from this project, but I promise I'm not losing interest or drive.

One great thing is the delivery I had waiting when I got home from the office:



Took a little over a month, but the custom driveshaft is here and it seems like everything came out perfect! One thing some of you will notice is the lack of a rear CV joint. DSS recommended this solid 6-bolt flange instead since the transmission output slides. Now that I have it here I can see how well this will work. So one of my tasks this weekend is to make the pass through my X brace with a driveshaft loop.

I also had Joe's Racing make me some upper control arms since they have a jig that's more accurate than what I can do on a single set. They look great and seems strong yet light. One thing to note: their upper plate is for the metric upper ball joints and not the 1st gen Camaro stuff I bought. Basically the mounting holes are about 1/8" off so you can't bolt it in. I ended up ordering the Howe ball joints so I could use the 70+ Camaro housing with 67-69 Camaro stud. Kind of an odd combo, but it should work perfectly.

One question I hope you guys can answer is: Can I bolt my ball joints in under the arm rather than from the top? Reason being that I get more roll correction this way. Is there a potential safety/strength issue that I'm not seeing?

OEM style:


Under mounted:

[cornfedbill]

Those are nice arms. I like Joe’s Racing products. Good stuff.

Well, if it is bolted on to it is constrained if the bolts fail or loosen up. If they are on the bottom and fail thing get bad real fast.

Just don’t let the bolts fail.

What is the benefit of bolting the ball joints under the control arms?

[iadr]

Those are nice arms. I like Joe’s Racing products. Good stuff.

Well, if it is bolted on to it is constrained if the bolts fail or loosen up. If they are on the bottom and fail thing get bad real fast.

Just don’t let the bolts fail.

What is the benefit of bolting the ball joints under the control arms?

He's trying to get the benefit of a taller spindle, aka taller (upper) BJ, put it whicherver way you want, same thing.
AFIAK, taller BJ for that position are on the shelf at Howe.

That said, I seem to remember a couple of the biggest names there are in OE- Toyota and GM doing the ball joints "upside down", so just to argue, is that really any different (equally unsafe) than what he's doing? I would do ARP fasteners. Had no success with cheap, glass hard Gr8 stuff. Worse than gr 5 in just about every way.

[Sbeck09]

Those are nice arms. I like Joe’s Racing products. Good stuff.

Well, if it is bolted on to it is constrained if the bolts fail or loosen up. If they are on the bottom and fail thing get bad real fast.

Just don’t let the bolts fail.

What is the benefit of bolting the ball joints under the control arms?

You make a great point as far as the arm kind of being stuck on if I mount the arms like oem. Maybe I'll just do that. I always like to build in safety nets where I can.

The point of mounting them under the arm is solely to gain height at the outside of the arm. I need to raise my roll center a bit more than my taller ball joints are doing.

[Sbeck09]

He's trying to get the benefit of a taller spindle, aka taller (upper) BJ, put it whicherver way you want, same thing.
AFIAK, taller BJ for that position are on the shelf at Howe.

That said, I seem to remember a couple of the biggest names there are in OE- Toyota and GM doing the ball joints "upside down", so just to argue, is that really any different (equally unsafe) than what he's doing? I would do ARP fasteners. Had no success with cheap, glass hard Gr8 stuff. Worse than gr 5 in just about every way.

You nailed it! I already have +.5" ball joints and I've heard of breaking studs on anything longer. I think I'll look into lower the inner mount a little to not resort to sketchy fixes.

Good point about the upside down mounted BJ spindles. Never thought of that. I need to try and use this stuff as intended. I think we can all see that I'm not the smartest at suspension design. Haha

[cornfedbill]

You make a great point as far as the arm kind of being stuck on if I mount the arms like oem. Maybe I'll just do that. I always like to build in safety nets where I can.

The point of mounting them under the arm is solely to gain height at the outside of the arm. I need to raise my roll center a bit more than my taller ball joints are doing.

Mounting the flange above or below the control arm will not change the geometry. The pivot of the ball is still the same. You will need to go to a taller ball joint or a uni-ball to increase the distance between the ball joint pivots.

[Sbeck09]

Mounting the flange above or below the control arm will not change the geometry. The pivot of the ball is still the same. You will need to go to a taller ball joint or a uni-ball to increase the distance between the ball joint pivots.

I didn't think about that. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll work on lowering my inner mount to accomplish what I'm after.

[Sbeck09]

Can't believe it's been 2 weeks since I've felt like enough work has been done for an update. I've been busy with multiple other things on my plate right now, but I'm still very much motivated to drive this thing sooner rather than later.

Big thing has obviously been to wrap up suspension arm fab. Lower arms are 90% welded now and they feel light, but very beefy.



I plated it all in with 3/16" plate that was laying around so it should be pretty strong. The flat top plat gives me a nice spot to mount shock to the arm. I want to keep everything outboard and near the wheel.



You can better see the idea here. I should have plenty of room to the spindles, but all the heavy loads are contained to the heavily reinforced part of the arm.



Here is a better view without the shock mount blocking. Those are QA1 serviceable lower ball joints.



And of course a front view to show the arm angles. You can see that I have about 8 degrees of anti dive set in the upper arms and the arm angles all seem about what I expected. I kinda wanted a little more roll center adjustment on the upper arms, but it's really not worth fighting to get more. I think this will work far better than any of these trucks ever should and many other vehicles ever could. I'll be tacking the upper A plates on sometime this week.




Big shocker though....I have a new issue. My bump steer kit for the Mustang spindles is of course not going to work now. I have the studs from ridetech to use a 5/8" heim with their steering arms, but I can't find a compatible FEMALE heim joint since the tie rods are M14x1.5 threads. Anyone have any idea where I can find something that will fit this combo or that I can custom order? Hell even an idea for how I can make one?

[cornfedbill]

That looks plenty stout. It looks pretty good to me.

[Sbeck09]

That looks plenty stout. It looks pretty good to me.

Thank you! The one thing that's not accounted for yet is where I will mount the sway bar. Mainly because I have no idea what to run. Haha.