Ford Mustang Forums banner

best way to spend 1000 to make a fox handle

11K views 42 replies 22 participants last post by  NaptownStang 
#1 ·
#2 · (Edited)
$129.97 - http://www.maximummotorsports.com/s...roduct_info&cPath=122_124_233&products_id=580

$349.95 - http://www.maximummotorsports.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=21_90&products_id=480

$449.00 - http://www.maximummotorsports.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=21_89&products_id=225


Total - $928.92 plus tax and shipping

You'll get a better bang for your buck by properly locating and controlling your rear axle than you will by (barely) lowering your car and new struts with the kit you posted. Traction and braking should be improved as well, which won't happen with lowering springs.
 
#4 · (Edited)
Yeah, except with just the rear end stuff, you have an understeering pig, until you spend more money to address the front camber issues. I'd probably go more in the SFC/cc plates/good struts and shocks (rebuildable, for future changes) direction, personally. But, I completely agree the quadra bind rear is a huge problem and fixing it is a basic "building block" and money well spent.

I guess the question that needs to be asked is whether the $1000 is a starting point or is it the total amount to be spent? Also, it always makes sense to take care of maintenence or wear item stuff, before spending any fun money.
 
#7 ·
I had an '02 GT that I ran in Shelby club events that had similar springs/dampers as the Bullitt kit (MRT's version), but also full length SFC's, CC plates with an aggressive alignment, 13" PBR brakes/spindle ducts up front and a set of 17X9" rims with 275 DOT R's and it was pretty fun...and also had no problem keeping up with lots of "faster" set ups. Of course, when the rear end got to maxi bind and went "pop", it was kind of interesting...:eeek:

Anyhow, if $1000 is the total, doing the Bullitt kit plus SFC's and CC plates is pretty reasonable, I'd say.
 
#9 ·
I didn't notice that you had a Fox. You can get the same type of Bullitt spring/Tokico package without the bars for around $400, in that case. But, if you can swing it, for another $300 or so, you can get a package with better dampers, like Bilstein or Koni...well worth it.
 
#28 · (Edited)
swaybars are a bandaid for a poorly designed mustang suspension, instead of just throwing in aftermarket stiffer swaybar (which could decrease body roll, and decrease grip) ill explain in a min.....

u should focus on correcting and improving the overall suspension setup IE and chassis stiffness

getting rid of binding in rear (TA,LCA,PH bar) no more upper Control arms, doing this will let the car grip the ground a hell of a lot more than just throwing in stiff swaybars/springs/struts which will prolly just reduce body roll but u will still be sliding all over the place


reducing chassis flex will HELP TREMENDOUSLY! because itll let the suspension do its job


explanation..... going with a stiffer front swaybar will change the balance of the car for one...two going stiffer up front when hard cornering (autox) having a stiff swaybar will or could start to pull the inside tire off the ground and or pull a lot of weight off the inside tire, which decreases grip going around corners, because u might only have a few inches of rubber on the pavement on the outside tire depending on ur camber...


soo stay with the stock swaybars for now,

ive talked to ppl who actually run softer swaybars/4 cyl swaybars yes u will have more body roll but it will keep both tires on the ground increasing cornering grip. and thats when negative camber and coilover spring rates start to come into play....

i just talked to a guy on another forum, he is running no rear swaybar, so it boils down to your personal preference and how u get a feel for the car, its cheaper to swap swaybars from diff mustangs at a junkyard then buying aftermarket ones...


its nuts...
 
#29 ·
swaybars are a bandaid for a poorly designed mustang suspension, instead of just throwing in aftermarket stiffer swaybar (which could decrease body roll, and decrease grip) ill explain in a min.....

u should focus on correcting and improving the overall suspension setup IE and chassis stiffness

getting rid of binding in rear (TA,LCA,PH bar) no more upper Control arms, doing this will let the car grip the ground a hell of a lot more than just throwing in stiff swaybars/springs/struts which will prolly just reduce body roll but u will still be sliding all over the place


reducing chassis flex will HELP TREMENDOUSLY! because itll let the suspension do its job


explanation..... going with a stiffer front swaybar will change the balance of the car for one...two going stiffer up front when hard cornering (autox) having a stiff swaybar will or could start to pull the inside tire off the ground and or pull a lot of weight off the inside tire, which decreases grip going around corners, because u might only have a few inches of rubber on the pavement on the outside tire depending on ur camber...


soo stay with the stock swaybars for now,

ive talked to ppl who actually run softer swaybars/4 cyl swaybars yes u will have more body roll but it will keep both tires on the ground increasing cornering grip. and thats when negative camber and coilover spring rates start to come into play....

i just talked to a guy on another forum, he is running no rear swaybar, so it boils down to your personal preference and how u get a feel for the car, its cheaper to swap swaybars from diff mustangs at a junkyard then buying aftermarket ones...


its nuts...
thats crazy who would of thought
 
#12 ·
For $1000? All stock now? Oh boy.

First, I'd never recommend a TA or even a PHB as starting points. The major issues are controlling the body and camber curve.

I'm going to go a whole different way... that's to recommend struts/shocks and some good springs and swaybars (primarily the front bar) to keep the car planted and cut the roll lessening the loss of camber causes by the horrible suspension geometry. TA's and SFC's and all that, they don't give you more contact patch.

When you drive the car I'm pretty sure the major complaints are that it wallows around, it doesn't track well, it takes bumps horribly and hops and skips around, etc. Right?

I'll finish by saying you can't make the car handle anywhere near as well as you could on $1000, that's barely a dent and things like SFC's would be great to have, but a good set of shocks alone will be $500+ (and that's not a great set of shocks).

If you don't understand suspension, then $1000 seems like a lot--but folks spend that and much more on parts that make less real world difference. Headers, rear ends. Hell a good set of tires will cost $1k and wear out in 15k miles.....
 
#13 ·
Great post.

Koni Yellows, FMS springs a friend gave me because he thought they were too stiff (I tried to tell him his problem was the KYBs not controlling the wheels!) and CC plates went a long way on my car when I was a broke college student.

If I had a $2000 total budget, I'd do no power mods and add the rear suspension though.
 
#14 ·
When I first modified the suspension on my car back in 1995, I did exactly what you guys are recommending. I put in Koni shocks and struts (even Koni quad shocks!) and put in some lowering springs that dropped the car about 1.75". For five years I had a car that felt like it handled pretty well, but rode like a tractor and scraped every molehill I drove over. Every girl I dated HATED going anywhere in my car without wearing a sports bra (not that I minded! :king:).

While I was installing my torque arm and panhard bar, I made the decision to reinstall the factory springs. My car handled better with the TA/PHB combo and factory springs than it did scraping the ground everywhere, and was far more comfortable. Of course, like most of us, I have eventually decided to install a coilover set up.

A big part of my recommendation for the OP to use his limited funds for a TA/PHB was to avoid having to buy the same parts twice. The TA/PHB will set up a foundation for future modifications and won't need to be redone at a later date, and they shouldn't wear out.
 
#15 ·
When I first modified the suspension on my car back in 1995, I did exactly what you guys are recommending. I put in Koni shocks and struts (even Koni quad shocks!) and put in some lowering springs that dropped the car about 1.75".
Which Koni's? Of they were the reds, the spring you needed to run to keep the car off the bumpstops after droping it 1.75" was likely too stiff for the dampers, therefore your ride quality went out the window -- OR -- your springs weren't stiff enough and you were hitting the bumpstops all the time.

Also, lowering the car 1.75" is WAY too much for the stock suspension geometry. You've put the front end well into bump travel territory. You're going to loose what little dynamic camber gain the front end had and instead, you'll have dynamic camber LOSS, which never did anyone any good.


For five years I had a car that felt like it handled pretty well,
I will bet that if you'd measured the handling, you would have found that it was worse than if you had left it stock. What feels fast ain't necessarily so.

While I was installing my torque arm and panhard bar, I made the decision to reinstall the factory springs. My car handled better with the TA/PHB combo and factory springs than it did scraping the ground everywhere, and was far more comfortable.
I'm not surprised!

A big part of my recommendation for the OP to use his limited funds for a TA/PHB was to avoid having to buy the same parts twice.
The TA/PHB combo is a good approach, but increasing the grip in the back without addressing the grip in the front just leaves you with a car that plows terribly. On the street you may not care, but on an autocross course or on the track, where it matters, you'll hate fighting a car with a lot more rear grip compared to the front.

Springs and dampers are the foundation of the suspension and if chosen wisely, should work for a long, long time. If the owner does eventually cheeose to go with a rear TA./PHB setup, all he needs to do is replace the rear springs with stiffer ones. That'll cost all of MAYBE $100 -- maybe cheer depending on where you shop. My rear springs cost me under $60.
 
#19 ·
Spend $940 on the recommended parts and $60 on a www.streetsurvival.org clinic or autocross school. The single biggest, cheapest improvement you can make to your car's handling is the proverbial "nut behind the wheel".
 
#20 ·
The single biggest, cheapest improvement you can make to your car's handling is the proverbial "nut behind the wheel".
100% agree.

Fix what's broken/worn out first. Then get some good springs/dampers on the car (personally, I like Koni Sports or Bilsteins -- talk to Sam Strano about specific spring rates, dampers and how much to safely lower the car.)

Lastly, upgrade the nut behind the wheel. In fact, I'm tempted to say leave the springs and dampers alone and spend that money on the driver too.
 
#21 · (Edited)
Spend the $1000 on quality USED parts and it will go twice as far.

I too am in the "springs/shocks/cc plates" make the car FEEL faster camp, but don't really make it much faster. I may have actually been faster auto-x'ing when I drove my boneass stock '89 LX hatchback with 215/60-15 treadware 540 tires than I was when I drove my 2900# '92 notchback detailed below. I could really toss that hatchback around, it was silly.

I'm no Strano, but I've been auto-x'ing foxbodies since '92 (with some years off here and there). For years, I competed against Weiss, Ramey, Fair, 'Tucci and a bunch of other foxbody gods and got my ass handed too me, ALOT. There's a reason why they all ditched the foxbodies as soon as they could, and that reason is called quadrabind.

For a bazillion years, I had 1000#/inch front springs with koni yellow SAs, CC plates up front, soft rear springs and koni reds out back. It handled just like every other overly-stiff quadra bind mustang out there, it was great at high speed stuff, terrible at an auto-x.

Last year, I went to a modified Griggs' adjustable PHB with a trak-link for a TA. Got some used TA rate springs for $60. Got a used front coil-over KIT for ~$60, came with 300#/inch springs (later swapped in some 425s). The difference was ZOMGBBQLOLWAT? I almost put the car into a curb because it actually turned in, hard! Still tinkering with sway bars and shock settings, but it's silly how much better the car is now. The trak-link is admittedly an experiment. There are maybe 3 of us in the country that I know of who have tried to use it as a proper TA (and one of them, Jim, frequents this board so he can chime in if he wants to), not including Pederson who decoupled his (which is a trick f'ing setup that I want to emulate one day. I've seen that car go around TWS and it is just silly fast and grippy).

Anyhow, I am not recommending a trak-link setup, but I am recommending a tried and true TA setup. You just have to shop smart, shop S-mart.

My suggestion would be to make a list of costs for the major parts and then start by buying the most expensive. Once you get down to things like springs, it is easier to save up for them because they are cheaper (especially once you go coilover).

I think I've posted this before but I am going to post it again. Below is my list of my super-savings cheap-ass purchases. Everything was used unless otherwise specified.

I've basically put my entire car together from CL buys, used parts from corner carvers, or purchases from the Corral (or from Wade's left overs hehe). Here's a run down of my crazy cheap deals:
'98 Cobra brakes front and rear w/rear axle assembly including hollow swaybar, $500 (score!)
2 18*9 wheels, $50
aluminum ford racing driveshaft, $75 + $20 to have it checked out for trueness
SCT chip for EEC-IV, $50 (still need to get it tuned, though)
set of stock valves for GT-40 ford heads, plus one spare head, $50
Griggs front coil-over kit with 300#/in springs (I already had the konis), $60
rear H&R 350-390 springs ("torque arm" rates), $60
NIB Griggs standard duty panhard bar, $300 (later sold it to recover the money)
Griggs adjustable heavy duty panhard bar, traded my 4 lug ponies for it
barely used caster/camber plates, $100
1 front Koni strut, free from 3 foxes Ron (thanks!)
SN95 control arms, free from Wade (thanks!)
'94/'95 mustang front spindles, $80 for the pair via local junkyard deal (and she gave me a beer to drink with her while I waited)
new crappy seats, $65 each via carparts.com (edit: these seats sucked balls)
3G alternator, $45
lincoln mark 8 2-speed electric fan, $65 (installed! no more flex fan!!!)
damaged GT500 heat extractor, $28
NIB 4pt k-member brace, free from a friend after Wade got his car running
new helmet, $45 shipped
used 5 pt. Pyrotect cam lock harness, $23 shipped
Cobra Crane 1.7 roller rockers, $125
Update: I ditched the crappy seats and bought a barely used Ultrashield for $125. Great f'ing seat, drove the car from Texas to Boston with it, no pain (admittedly, I did add 1" thick foam padding behind the cover).However, I currently do not have a passenger seat. BFD, I can find used Kirkeys for $100.

I also added a harness bar, designed and welded by Sam Crumpacker (Texas CMC guy). It cost me like $20? in steel and took Sam 2 hours to fab, install, uninstall, paint, and re-install. This thing is awesome and tightened the car up a bit. Plus I could hang some clothes on it while driving cross country. That scratched the paint all to hell though :(

Casey
 
#22 ·
Spend the $1000 on quality USED parts and it will go twice as far.

I too am in the "springs/shocks/cc plates" make the car FEEL faster camp, but don't really make it much faster.
Couldn't agree more with buying used parts (and all the rest of your post). For the stuff the op is looking for, there's tons of Fox Mustang guys who have upgraded past that point and are likely to have parts sitting in the garage that they'd be more than happy to see go away.

Disagree with the feel fast/don't go faster with springs/shocks/cc plates. Getting some static camber and then controlling it is huge in being able to actually use your front tires, whether it be autocross or track. Stock, the car will just roll onto the front sidewalls and plow...not fast. No doubt this is not the final solution and, once you get the front to grip, you still have the rear end problems to drive around, but it will be faster on the clock.
 
#26 ·
If I had a time machine I'd go back three years and smack my self for not buying SFCs the day I bought the car. Springs/dampers/camber plates/swaybar made it feel different, SFCs made it feel faster. Who knows how much all the other stuff helped, but SFCs made the biggest "feel" difference to me. Everything seemed sloppy without them. I'll probably say the same thing about this PHB if it ever gets installed.
 
#30 · (Edited)
I think you need to define what handling means to you, and what your "needs" might be a little more clearly. What, specifically, do you want the car to do better or at least differently? What would be enough to satisfy you? (Be honest here; please don't wish for the moon and hope that 1.3 sustained lat-g and a drama-free 75 mph slalom speed can be yours for $1k.)


You don't need to do nearly as much for a daily driver or even a weekend car that generally isn't pushed past about 0.6 lat-g as you would if you're looking to regularly compete at autocross or take up open-tracking. FWIW, I doubt that 1 person in 1,000 ever drives above 0.6 lat-g intentionally, and that fewer still do so on a regular basis. IOW, even the difference between being able to pull 0.87g vs 0.80g is essentially meaningless at this level of driving.

If all you really want to do is gain a little lateral grip, dial out some of the roll, and perhaps sharpen the turn-in response a bit, springs/bars/shocks and a street-performance alignment (with the appropriate tires and adequate wheels that you're holding out separate from this discussion) will give you some of that. Ideally, you choose stiff enough and not so low that you put the geometry (such as it is) too far away from where it's at its best (some might say "least bad" here, but you should understand that it is entirely possible to make it worse). The 600/250 FRPP spring rates look at least reasonable in this respect, at least if a firm-ish ride is OK with you. Harshness is mostly shocks/struts, and if the shocks/struts are valved anywhere near like the OE and FRPP S197 pieces are you'll probably find them to be harsher than necessary for normal driving where the roads are less than smooth. Maybe these FRPP pieces aren't as bad as I'm afraid that they might be, but it might pay to be forewarned of the possibility. I don't know enough about the FRPP bars to comment at all on them.

But . . . and these may or may not matter,

more than likely the car still won't want to slalom all that well.

even an introduction to improved cornering performance may lead you to decide that you want to take it further. Keep this in mind.


Understand that it takes only a moderate amount of autocross seat time plus the stuff mentioned in the 3rd paragraph to be more than enough to beat an otherwise similar car as yours but modified more extensively with all the bells and whistles mentioned in previous posts that's being driven by a newbie. You probably wouldn't expect a 1979 Chevy Malibu with less than $500 worth of suspension work, still on the same sort of converging 4-link rear suspension as your Fox-body, and running on only 225/60-15 tires to take an autocross class win away from a 2000 torque arm equipped Mustang on wide 18's, but I know for a fact that it has happened.

Seat time, tires/wheels, everything else.



Norm
 
#33 ·
...you can't make any of those pieces work without a (35-45) mm tall and (245-275) mm wide tire.
You are saying we have to have a 1.5" to 2" tall tire?!?

I think you mean a 35-45 SERIES tire with a 245-275 mm section width.

And I disagree with that. Getting the suspension right will help a LOT regardless of what size tire you run. A LOT of my initial suspension development was done running 225 and 235 series tires, mostly because they were cheap and fit my narrower rims well.

Even now, I compete using 255 tires instead of the more popular 275s because they're easier to fit, and they're LIGHTER than the bigger tires. Folks get anal about getting an expensive set of wheels that are a couple of lbs lighter, but ignore the weight of the tire, assuming bigger is always better. Toyo RA1s in 255 are 4 lbs lighter per tire than 275s.
 
#39 ·
There have been some very interesting points made in this thread so far and I've gained a ton by reading it in it's entirety. Many thanks go out to the experienced individuals whom have shared their time and knowledge.
 
#40 ·
Replace the bits that are worn out first.

I've done several cars going back to 92, and several iterations of my old 92.
My wife's 02 GT was done on a similar budget- we did Konis, Eibach Pro Kit springs, and Steeda rear lower control arms. It handled very well for a low budget job. Stiffer springs would be a little better, but we're old and not very tolerant of a rough ride. Her car worked better than the stock Bullitt. I know, an Evolution autox instructor who competed in a Bullitt very excitedly asked me what I had done to it, because as he said "this car would kill the Bullitt".

Stock bars on a fox are pretty stiff, I'd leave them alone. And I'd buy used parts, but I'd avoid used shocks.

Justin
 
#41 ·
Buy the subframe connectors from MM and have them welded in by a competent shop. Pickup their C/C plates and aluminum rack bushings and put them in. Spend the $40 and get the urethane bushings for the front control arms. They really don't add much harshness on a street driven car. Get a good alignment.

Save an additional $700 more and do their front and rear coil over kits. Call MM and talk to one of their techs about what you would like out of the car, and they will advise you on spring rates. I have an opinion, but that and $5 will get you a coffee at Starbucks. The difference on even a completely stock Mustang is night and day. The additional wheel rate you can get with a coil over setup is so much greater I would never run conventional springs on anything again, ever. While I don't have a Fox in the stable anymore, I have been through more friggen spring sets on that platform than I care to remember.

If you really want the car to handle well, spend a little bit more and do it once. You won't regret it. Just my $.02
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top