I am starting to develop my game plan for my 69 fastback. keep in mind its on a budget so I will hunt bone yards for parts of other cars. Its going restomod for sure. I have the rims (17" coy 5 spoke with 245/45R17 kuhmo tires). Now for brakes, I was going to change the front to disc and maybe the back if I can find a reasonable kit for the back. I would also like to change to power brakes if I can find a booster of another car. I have a 351 with low miles out of a 96 f250 trunk with efi. I would like to find a mustang intake and computer setup and keep it injected. The tranny is going to be a t-5. The rear end is a 9" with 3.00 or so gears. I was going with the shelby drop and going for a total of lowering the car 1 to1 1/2" overall. I was going with a hiedt subframe that has the x through it to strength it up. Front and rear sway bars bigger than stock maybe boss size repos. Bilsten shocks. I was kicking around the idea of rack and pinion off of ebay for 800 bucks. Interior I was going stock with a hump hugger console and custom front buckets seats with the mach1 upholstery made to fit the fronts. What do you guys think? Any suggestions? Any cheap budget tricks to help me get the results I am looking for? I am looking for a nice cruiser that handles nice rides nice and will be good on gas with good power (will supercharge if necessary).
Thanks
Todd

 

if you're going t5, i would drop the diff ratio to 3.5 or 3.7 to liven things up a bit.

from memory i think the heidt subframe x connector needs exhaust rerouting.
i personally think you'll get more bang for handling buck by using some roller arms, roller spring perches etc so that your steering response is improved.

bilsteins are great shocks. Maier Racing have their own bilstein valve rates etc. another option is QA-1 or Spax adjustable.

given the back brakes dont doa lot of work and you have 17" rims, for me it would be a no brainer tospend the money on bigger brakes for the front and leave the rear drums for later.

I suggest you do a lot of homework on the suspension. I went with stiff spring rates all round and big front sway, smaller rear sway. I'm in the process of softening it all off bit by bit and finding the handling is improving.

on the seats, if i had the money i'd make sure they have some improvedside support. nothing like sliding off the old surfboards into the door mid corner

 

Im currently doing rear discs on my 9" and I'll spend about $350. If I were to get standard rotors and pads it would be considerably less..

I had to either fully replace the drum set-up, or convert to disc...it seemd like a no brainer for that price...

 

Aussie
what spring rate did you use? What are you going to? The buckets will definatly have side supports.
Baddog
what kit for the rear are you using?

 

I dont know the rate of the front springs...they were just "heavy duty lowering springs". I suspect they are between 620 - 700. I weigh about 200lbs and my weight on the front fender barely drops it! The rate that seems most sensible for my car is 500lbs. As yours is a bit heavier, maybe 550 would still be ok. I'm learning a lot about it. Both ScottH and Daze on this forum are pretty cluey with this area.

As far as rears, i have 5 leaf reverse eyes. I have removed the sway and that improved it with a 200lb mate on board. Without the passenger...too stiff.I got the Spax shocks yesterday and they will be in tonight. If they control the spring better then great but my gut feel is the car will still be too stiff as the 66 has a pretty light rear.

The idea I want to try is the 5 leaf front half/ 3 leaf rear half spring. The front half acts as a control arm and also being stiffer will manage wheel hop without traction bars. the rear half is managing the compliance and allowing enough spring travel to keep the wheels planted on rougher roads. I cant afford a good panhard set up at the moment so I will probably just use urethane or del-a-lum bushes to control lateral movement for the time being.

i've learned more about the handling of this car in the last 6 weeks than the whole 10 years of owning it. I am also determined to get the best i can out ofthe carwithout resorting to coilovers and other "modernising" techniques. That said, there are a lot of ways to improve the original style parts.

hope this helps and good luck with your choices.