Help choose front suspension for street rod-ish project

I'm thinking of scratch building a rod with a road-race type flavor.

Model A Roadster pickup type body, grill shell and not much else. Not a rat rod but not a traditional rod either.

Fat tires all around and low.

I'm looking for the best bang for the buck front suspension. Is this it:

http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Mustang-II-IFS-Std-Tubular-Control-Arms-Stock-Springs-Dropped-Spindles,35270.html

I was also thinking of 1. a corvette C4 front suspension and 2. Building my own.

I'd rather not reinvent the wheel with the latter and the former is going to be as expensive as the speedway. I think.

Not looking for the ultimate in performance, not looking to be be period correct or satify any street rod guys.

Just looking to build a fun car and would like to hear a counterpoint to my above choice.

(I have a full fab shop, so I can build anything, but not a TON of time to do so. I will be building the frame and body.)

Why not a Miata? The front suspension is pretty modular and well understood.

I don't think you can go wrong with C4 Corvette both front and rear. They are cast aluminum polish up really nice. Couple with coilovers can buy complete frames that accept C4 component. Shopping around you can find rolling C4 chassis cheap cheap cheap. I bought a trash Heap c4 for for $500.

If you're going to be making a lot of horsepower you want to buy a manual transmission car because it has the larger Dana 44 rear and as opposed 2 the smaller Dana 36 rear end found on automatics

I came here to say what Ovid_and_Flem said

Or 03+ crown vic front bolts in, so you could set your rail width to the front end. Bonus you get an 8.8 rear with a watts link and nice big disc brakes and real sway bars if you grab a p71.

First question is "what track do you want"?

The Miata suspension works well, but it's not pretty. Unless you go with NC/NX8, then you get the aluminum arms.

Thanks for the replies.

I'll be a bit of a snob now and say I don't want a miata or vw front because it's not street-roddy enough.

Plus bolt pattern. plus brakes in the case of vw.

I don't really care a lot about track width but C4 may be on the wide side.

I also don't need the cheapest...I'm fine with the $1300 speedway complete kit, but don't want to overlook a better solution (if there were a circle track setup for example in a semi-kit form I could use.)

Also would like to know if the drop spindles on the above mustang II kit are the way to go or just go with standard?

If it has to be street roddy, just stuff a stick under there and forget it.

I have a $1700+ mustang 2 based tubular front end under the belair. If i were to do it all again I would go crown vic. Not because $ but because it's just better.

If I remember correct, C4s had forged aluminum, not cast.

Why not just drop the cab shell on what amounts to a VetteKart?

Keith Tanner wrote: If it has to be street roddy, just stuff a stick under there and forget it.

This, you can do pretty good with a stick axle.

Or the Lotus 58, they considered building a F1 car with a solid axle front end (DeDion in the rear), in 1968.

I welded in one of the speedway kits into a 69 Mustang for a friend who was doing a Coyote swap, and have to say that for what they charge, they are a screaming bargain.

Current project in that same shop is putting a Crown Vic front end under a 69 Mustang with a Lincoln IRS out back. THAT is getting to be interesting.

The Vette stuff has a pretty wide track for a T bucket unless you narrow the hell out of it. Not sure what that does to the geometry.

I like cantilevered quarter elliptic beam axles on T-Buckets. I bet there is a cheap axle to be had somewhere.

Model A that the original poster talked about doing is much wider than a t bucket. Relatively speaking.

i would go c4 on both ends, and adjust track width with backspacing. on my 29 model a roadster pickup, we had some huge bias plys on 15x10 wheels with only 2 inch backspacing. it was wider than my c4 track car outside to outside.

polish up the aluminum, coilovers, and run it home. with the weight you propose, I wouldn't worry about the dana 35 from an automatic car, or the 88 up vette suspension and brake geometry changes. not enough to justify the additional cost in this application.

Another vote for a stick. Look at the front of a dirt modified. Some coilovers and four link with a polished axle tube could look good and handle well on a light car.

Someone on the HAMB probably has one for sale right now.

I'm just going to leave this right here:

'27 Lakester build for inspiration

In reply to Indy-Guy:

I was thinking about that one. It has c4 suspension on custom box frame

Funny this question comes up now. I have some friends that race in Lemons and they have a very old car that they plan on racing in the series. Over the winter they want, and I strongtly advised them to replace the entire from suspension with something built in this century. I suggested the Crown Vic front assembly. This is ideal since they replaced the old rear axle with one out of an Explorer so the wheel bolt pattern will remain the same. They were worried that the new suspension would be to wide to fit. It ends up that the crown vic track width is 2 inches less then what they have now. Go figure.

It's still a good solution for their car and frees up options on wheel offsets.

Sounds like we have similar goals for our builds. I'm the guy doing the Lakester inspired build shown in this thread. I wanted a great handling little car that I sat down into instead of on it as would be the case with a traditional Hot Rod.

I've built a number of cars using C4 parts and C5 too for that matter. My Hot Rod is using C4. I prefer the look of a solid front axle but wanted the performance of independent suspension. I built my LOCOST inspired frame out of 1.5 inch tubing and built in the stock C4 mounting points. From past experience I know the car will be great handling.

It has been awhile since I worked on my project. I had knee replacement surgery in March. Then this summer I've been remodeling a house for a daughter. I just finished that project. I started back on my Hot Rod a few days ago. I'm updating my project in the build section today.

Good luck with your build!

jimbbski wrote: Funny this question comes up now. I have some friends that race in Lemons and they have a very old car that they plan on racing in the series. Over the winter they want, and I strongtly advised them to replace the entire from suspension with something built in this century. I suggested the Crown Vic front assembly. This is ideal since they replaced the old rear axle with one out of an Explorer so the wheel bolt pattern will remain the same. They were worried that the new suspension would be to wide to fit. It ends up that the crown vic track width is 2 inches less then what they have now. Go figure. It's still a good solution for their car and frees up options on wheel offsets.

Iirc, the Panther got some suspension tweaks around 2002. Wheel offset changed quite a bit, which means the hub to hub measurement also changed. So there are two effective tracks out there, assuming you use the same wheel on both.

Keith Tanner wrote:

jimbbski wrote: Funny this question comes up now. I have some friends that race in Lemons and they have a very old car that they plan on racing in the series. Over the winter they want, and I strongtly advised them to replace the entire from suspension with something built in this century. I suggested the Crown Vic front assembly. This is ideal since they replaced the old rear axle with one out of an Explorer so the wheel bolt pattern will remain the same. They were worried that the new suspension would be to wide to fit. It ends up that the crown vic track width is 2 inches less then what they have now. Go figure. It's still a good solution for their car and frees up options on wheel offsets.

Iirc, the Panther got some suspension tweaks around 2002. Wheel offset changed quite a bit, which means the hub to hub measurement also changed. So there are two effective tracks out there, assuming you use the same wheel on both.

The 98-02 stuff is part of the chassis like any old rwd car. 03+ is on a bolt in crossmember. Wheel offset went from typical dished rwd stuff to fwd type offset with lots of backspacing, so while the track stayed the same the hub to hub measurement is around 3" wider on 03+ cars.

http://rallyways.com/4446/double-down-1932-ford-roadster-jet-hot-rod-build/

Repurposing any OEM suspension is going to bring with it all the design restrictions in the donor vehicle and add those to yours.

For instance look at the length of the a arms on the above example compared to a Mustang C4 or P71.

Following with great interest. I've been looking at doing this for two years. Gathered catalogues, took pictures and looked for inspiration at the hot rod cars shows I've been attending (Good Guys, etc). Not a lot of cars with turning in mind it seems. My buddy who's very into cars -mainly hot rods- said "I don't care about turning" after I told him I'd like a hot rod that can turn (i.e. run autocross too).

How low is your '27 jmc14? Is it hard to drive on the street?

Just saw this:

https://indianapolis.craigslist.org/cto/5703091489.html

Shoot, what do we change to make this click-able now??