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From: Mike Patterson
Email: [email protected]
Date: February 16, 2002
To me the basic Mustang II setups have several draw backs. In a lot of the kits, you get basic stock componets which include rather small rotors and calipers, and stock upper and lower control arms designed for a much smaller and lighter car that what they will eventually end up in. The componets in a lot of cases have to be individually welded in along with a new front cross member. You are also limited by the spring selection for these cars, i.e. 4 Cyl, V6, and V8 (in some cases even the 78 V8 AC springs (the heaviest available stock springs) and not enough. A lot of time is spent making sure these are correctly loctated so the car can be aligned and goes down the road straight. (I had a very bad experience with a poorly designed kit that had to be re-engineered to work correctly. On the bright side most kits are properly designed.) In most cases the M II kits can be upgrade with tubular control arms and bigger brakes and calipers, but the costs really add up quickly, and your talking about semi-custom parts. If you screw up a rotor on Sunday afternoon for instance (say either a stock Mustang rotor that has been redrilled for a 5 bolt pattern (or one of the bigger rotors) where are you going to get one locally? Chances are you order one from where you got the kit. Generally speaking you can pick up a complete Aspin/Volare sub frame (or complete parts car) for almost nothing. On the subframe (which is drop out) everything is already mounted and all that is required is properly aligning the entire unit to the existing frame (also a time consuming job). You get bigger brakes, power steering and the good old adjustable torsion bars. The componets were designed for a larger and heavier car, and all the componets are off the shelf items. Yes in a lot of cases you can drop the height when you install the subframe, but in the case of frame rails that tapper or kick up in the front there may not be enough frame rail to do this, in which case the dropped spindels would work nicely ( or if you want to drop one that has been built to stock ride height).
