Anyone using Maier frame stiffners and cross member? I ran across them today when I was looking for new springs. Look like a great unit and very sturdy. Anyone got any experience with them?

 

Is it for the 65 in you vehicle listing?
If so I ran the gambit when I was pondering SFC's but decided that without torque boxes it was not the improvement I was looking for, and the side exhaust issue came to the forefront.
I have installed boxes on both sides of my 65 this spring and am expecting a stiffer car. Connecting SFC's from that thin floor pan support to the rear frame may help some, but after installing the front supports and seeing how thin they are I decided to pass for now.

 

anytime you connect the front frame to the back frame on a unibody car it's a good thing, I made my own for my 69

 

That front floor support is not much of a "frame". If I was going to go that route and skip out on the torque boxes I would make connectors that eliminate the floor pan supports and goes all the way up to the front frame out of heavier gauge metal than those thin floor pan supports.

If the Ford engineers would have thought the best way to stiffen up a 65/66 car was to connect those thin floor pan supports to the rear torque box I am certain they would have done so.

 

Ok, Don't do it

 

I posted about making my own a few weeks ago and got some great replies. I am just not that technical nor do I have a welder so I do the best I can with my limited abilities. Often I end up doing it more than once which is expensive and very time consuming.

 

Coupe-Did you look at the Maier's?

 

Don't count on it. I worked on projects where we spent $100,000 to cut $0.10 out of a consumer electronic product. Ship 10M units and increase your profit by $1M, not a bad return on investment. Everything is a compromise and these cars were engineered to be manufactured at the lowest cost possible. In the first 18 months Ford produced 1 mil Mustangs, if they cut $10 from each car that netted the company.......you do the math.

You'd be very surprised...or maybe not...how much investment goes into cutting cost out of a product.

 

Not surprised at all. I am retired from Corporate America and saw it everyday. Just cutting 1 minute out of every driver everyday when you have over 100,000 employees is a staggering figure. Now that I own my own screen-printing business, I opted to go the other way when I started 12 years ago and offer the best quality and service on the market at a fair price and we have never stopped growing. In the last 7 years alone, we have completed well over 1,000,000 prints. We have grown nationwide simply by referrals. My employees are well paid and have great benefits. Could I take away from my employees and cut some corners and make a lot more, absolutely, but seeing how Corporate America thinks, I choose not to. When you deal with huge numbers, a penny makes a huge difference. Unfortunate but true.

 

Do what you want, but if you have ever changed out floor supports you will see how thin they are, connecting to them when they are NEW and the full floor pan is NEW may help, but am just pointing out that if you are dealing with old car blues there is a better way, the boxes are around $70 each.

If you are talking about these then It would certainly help.


The Heidts may be an option.



But I would still add boxes to the front, that outer rocker can assist and is wider etc..