OLD CROW 3v Mustang: Wheels arrived and Suspension Plans

With wheels and tires purchased, the next step in the modification process is to pick up suspension goodies!

First, before we get to suspension, a few pics of the big boy wheels that showed up this week!

None of these pictures do these wheels justice. They are way more concave and wide in person. 

To actually fit this wide of a wheel and tire up front, there are a few small things we need to do. For a good reference, you need to check out apexwheels.com and find there "Wheel and Tire Fitment Guide" page (click the link to check it out!). They give the basic guidelines for the various widths. The issue is that the inside of the wheel will contact the strut body, so we need to use a spacer to push the wheel away from the strut for clearance. Brent uses a 19mm spacer. That is what was recommended by Ashley (Tribar Racer on Facebook) who has been competing with the S197 since it debuted in 2005. 

To run a spacer, we need to run extended wheel studs. The ARP studs are what most guys run, so that is the plan there. Since the car has 131k miles, a good way to go, which simplifies the install as well is to buy the whole hub assembly that comes with ARP studs from Ford Performance. You can get these all the big Mustang online stores like LMR or AmericanMuscle.

Now that we have clearance for the inside of the "wide bois", we need to clear the fender lip on the outside of the wheel. Here's another 2 birds, 1 stone step. We need to dial in more negative camber. See below for Maximum Motorsports camber plates. By running more aggressive negative camber, this achieves clearance for the fender and wheel/tire but also improves cornering by keeping the tire more flat to the road surface as the suspension is compressed and the front McPherson strut geometry goes through its arc shaped path, it remains more flat. If you stuck with OEM camber settings (-1.0 degree of camber or less), when the the outside tire compresses the suspension, it will actually want to lift the inside of the tire off the ground, losing contact with the road and thus losing grip. 

This increase in negative camber to about -2.7 degrees (as noted in the Apex Wheels Fitment guide) will help the wheel/tire clear the fender and also improve cornering ability. Win win!!

Here's a quick picture of Brent's Red Baron and his front camber. ;)

 Ok, maybe this pic doesn't quite show the front negative camber like I thought it was going to, but daaaaaannngggg, check out this thang! More to follow on Brent's latest changes in the next blog!

Ok, so, camber, spacer, longer wheel studs inside new hubs, check. That is just to fit the wide bois up front and give some more camber. The rest of the suspension is a longer story. 

Luckily, Maximum Motorsports makes a package or kit that gets us 90% the way there on suspension. It's called the "Road & Track Box" (click that link!) and they have it for a few generations of Mustang, including us S197 peeps.

So, here's the parts list:

• Maximum Motorsports Road & Track Spring set (about 2.0" drop, 320-360lb-in Front, 260-380lb-in Rear spring rates)
• Koni shocks and struts (non-adjustable)
• Maximum Motorsports Camber Plates (help dial in more camber)
• Eibach 36mm 3-way adjustable front sway bar
• Maximum Motorsports polished aluminum adjustable panhard bar (spherical rod ends)
• Maximum Motorsports aluminum rear lower control arms
• Maximum Motorsports front and rear bump stops and Ford strut/spindle bolts

This kit costs about $2400. That's as much as I spent on wheels and tires. You gotta pay to play as they say. Ok, there's a couple more parts we want to do for the rear suspension.

As recommended by Ashley, we want to do the rear lower control arm relocation brackets from KennyBrown.com. These are also called "anti-squat" brackets. They lower the roll center (aka pivot point) of the cars rear suspension. Mustangs are known for the nose diving down when under hard braking. This is part of that geometry from the factory. These brackets relocate the rear mounting point of the rear lower control arms and helps reduce dive and improves squat coming out of corners.

One more part needed from the KennyBrown catalog is the rear upper control arm or U-link its also called.

Here is the explanation from the KennyBrown site on what they did with the upper arm, "Kenny lengthened the upper control arm to reduce SVSA (side-view swing arm) instant center migration for more stable and predictable handling, grip and braking."


It's light, strong and improves geometry. The webpage notes: "IMPORTANT: 2005-2010 Mustangs REQUIRE upgraded FORD Upper Control Arm Upper Bolt, part #FOR-W714389S439"


So, we're looking at $180 for the lower brackets, $400 for the upper control car/U-link and $9 for upgraded bolts.
So, we're now up to about $3000 for suspension mods. We'll want to do front bump steer parts ($180 for bump-steer tie rods) as well up front. And Steeda makes an upgraded front lower control arm with bigger ball joints and stiffer bushings, that's $700. Cha-ching!


So, that's the plan! These parts along with the wide wheels and tires and negative camber will transform the handling of the Mustang and drop it about 2". Old Crow will look and handle amazing! Can't wait to hit some autox events this summer/fall in 2024.