1963 ford falcon sedan delivery.

Seeing as metalshapes asked about the front suspension, I’ll cover that next.
This bit has taken a long time tbh, and it’s not even made it onto the car yet, but you’ll see why.

Now, starting right at the beginning, falcons don’t have the best front suspension setup, not for lowering anyway. I found this out on my first one.
The suspension is the same as early mustang, twin A-arm(ish, lower arm is a single arm with a compression strut) with the spring and shock off the upper arm onto the inner wing. There isn’t a lot of room for shocks and they’re already pretty short to start with, so finding shorter options is difficult. The arm geometry isn’t great either, hence the ‘Shelby mod’ where you redrill the mounting holes for the upper arm to improve the geometry.

Or rather, mustang is the same as falcon, as the falcon came first and the mustang just stole the running gear. The only actual part that’s different (with some caveats) is the drag link, as the mustang has a slightly wider track width. Those biggest of those caveats is 6cyl spindles and brakes are different to v8 ones, as previously mentioned. That’s why I want the bigger v8 drums, cos they’re 5 stud rather than 4, so better wheel choice.

Now, for a ‘60s kustom to work, it has to be on the floor. No half measures on the lowering.
To get a falcon low without entirely different front suspension is hard. Indeed, most of the ones you see in the states that are truly low have aftermarket mustang 2 front clips. That involves a lot of work, usually new front chassis rails and inner wings (they’re a monocoque remember), which brings up all sorts of horrible identity questions over here. So I didn’t really want to go that route.

What I wanted to do was drop spindles. Keep all the mods in the bolt on bits to keep it a bit easier and not attract the unwanted attention of DOOVLA.
But they simply don’t exist for either falcons or even mustangs it seems. But seeing as I know quite a bit about early fords and how long they will keep a basic design going to wring every penny out of the development of it, I started to wonder about how long that practice carried on. I managed, by the power of the interwebs, to find a technical drawing of a mustang 2 spindle. I sat down with this, one of the falcon v8 spindles, and various measuring devices, and set to work.
The results were surprising!

Surprising enough for this to happen-


This picture should explain my findings pretty well-


That on the left is a helix pro-touring mustang 2 drop spindle. On the right is the stock 60s falcon v8 spindle.
I went for the helix ones for one reason. They have bolt-on steering arms. More about that later.
As for the spindle geometry itself, it’s the same. The KPI (kingpin inclination) is the same. This is the really critical part. It’s the angle of the imaginary line drawn between the two balljoint centres, and the centreline of the actual spindle stub. If those angles are the same, the two spindles will behave the same.
The two spindles also measure the same top to bottom on the balljoint mounts, so they’re the same height and won’t change the relationship of the upper and lower arms to each other.
Basically, those two things a make this a go-er.
As well as that the top balljoint is the same size. It literally bolts straight in. The m2 lower is larger but I can get around that without too much hassle.

The major news is the height of the spindle in relation to the upper and lower balljoints. These are 2” dropped spindles. In that they’re 2” lower than stock m2 ones. But m2 are already lower than ‘mustang 1’ ones. It’s by either 1” or 1.5” I can’t remember, and I don’t have my notes with me. But it means those drop spindles are a whopping 3-3.5” lower than stock.

I am left with 3(or 4 depending on how you look at it) issues.

1. Lower balljoint to mount the spindle to the arm.
2. Steering arms.
3. Brakes. Both the bearings for the drum onto the spindle, and making the backplate fit the spindle.

Do you think moving it a 1/4 turn will affect brake bleeding any?

When I've had problems (bas*t**d clutch on the LR for one) I've found vacuum bleeding gets most things to bleed OK. 
For someone who has just created his whole unique set up I'm sure it won't be a problem.
Noice.
James

I do find a lot of the American disc brake components from that period to be utterly awful, like you say another reason to avoid.

The lower balljoint threw up some issues. First I had to find a donor balljoint, preferably bolt-on, with the correct taper.
This took about 5 minutes of checking things laying round the workshop. Jag xj6 lowers were perfect. So I bought some.


Getting the old balljoints out of the arms was a bit of a mare. They have this big re-enforcing plate thing that runs back to where the compression strut bolts on. It’s riveted and spotwelded.


Drilling the welds after grinding the rivets.


Eventually apart-


Cut off the old balljoint cup-




Amazingly the jag balljoints were a perfect fit into the hole left. It sat them too low though so the ends of the arms hit the backplates.


So I thought about that and figured I’d just make some adapters to space them up.
This would effect the relationship between upper and lower arms, but thinking about it some more it would have the same effect as doing the Shelby mod would. The Shelby mod involves drilling the upper arm mounting holes on the inner wings lower, moving the mounting points at that end closer together. So spacing the balljoint ends apart essentially does the same thing.

So, break out the heavy plate. Here I’m copying the first one I made the lazy way.


A pair-


Countersinking the back side to bury the fixings-


Some more appropriate hi tensile fixings and I can start putting it together.








And the spindle bolted up-


And as an entire assembly-




You can see here how spacing the balljoint up makes the lower arm clear the brakes.


So, it’s more or less ready to try on the car once I’ve put some paint on and chucked some new bits in the brakes. But that won’t be happening until the truck is out the way.

That is some really smart mixing and matching of parts.

I love it.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.speedwaymotors.com/amp/the-toolbox/understanding-shelby-arning-drop-changes/29324


This about covers it. What it doesn’t mention though is the geometry differences are mostly down to tyres. Crossplies or bias plies, which these cars were designed and built for, don’t mind a positive camber curve, in fact they usually prefer it. Radials prefer the opposite.

Obviously I’ve not checked yet, but I think spacing the balljoint should have the same effect of changing the camber curve as moving the inner arm mount does. I certainly don’t see how it could negatively effect it. My COG and roll centre are moved by the drop of the spindles themselves.

Yep.

That is the exact same reasoning people use on drum brakes.

Replace worn out drums with new discs and then endlessly sing praises of how much better they are.

They are not.

Discs have one thing going for them, heat dissipation.


But they are not self energizing like a good drum setup is...

I often find my drum brakes are too good and have to find ways of toning them down. More about that on this later!