portstangly23

Hey,
I'm looking at trying to reduce lateral movement on my car. Any ideas where to start? Upper/Lower control arms?

petrock

Control arm bushings & sway bar bushings.

Stevo86

The upper control arms locate the rear end up and down, the lowers locate it side to side. Skip the bushings and invest in some good UPR control arms. Easy to change and at $160 a set it's well worth not having to burn bushings out.

petrock

Polyurethane bushings will tighten things up considerably with the stock control arms. To get the stock control arms to flex you need to be pulling some serious G’s in a corner. If you take your car to the track, then upgraded control arms may be beneficial. But for a daily driver, you won’t be able to tell the difference between upgraded control arms and stock arms with poly bushings.

btw, I rented a ball-joint press (c-clamp style) from my local autozine to remove and install poly bushings in my trucks control arms & my wifey’s mustang. I only had to heat two of the bushings on the mustang a little bit since the rubber was bonded to their outer shell. Doesn’t take much heat. Just enough to get it to smoke a little and the press will take it the rest of the way. Just sayin’...

TRUEBLUE3934

The improved bushings in good aftermarket LCA will help.
However, to really address the lateral movement of the rear you should install a panhard bar. It really made a big difference in my car and I already had excellent LCA on my car.

Darkhorse04GT

Actually, both the upper and lower arms locate the axle fore and aft as well as controlling the pinion angle. Neither uppers or lowers can locate the axle laterally without at least one set of them being triangulated.

A coil and link suspension works as follows.
1) Coils suspend the vehicle.
2) Link arms position the axle for and aft as well as set the pinion angle.
3) Panhard or track bar positions the axle laterally... unless the link arms are triangulated, then a panhard bar is not needed.

Since the link arms of a Mustang are triangulated, the panhard bar is not needed and the Mustang doesn't come with one.

While I haven't posted much here, you can read an article I wrote about suspensions, steering, and driveline on the Jeep Forum. I illustrate the setups because it's easier to understand when you can see it. http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f8/ef...in-etc-784807/

Darkhorse04GT

To complete my thought... link arms that don't flex and firm bushings will go a long way toward keeping the axle from shifting. I'd use adjustable arms on the upper arms so the pinion angle can be fine tuned.

Don't over-tighten the bolts when re-installing so the suspension will cycle like it should.