I am really wanting to convert my Maverick over to the Mustang II style suspension soon to allow me to run more modern engines in the car. If I do this, first and foremost, I have no intention of running those dinky little tubular control arms.. and the strut rod eliminator stuff I've seen for the stock control arms is even worse. My car isn't a sunny weekend around town cruiser. It is a driver, and I mean real driver in every sense of the word. All weather, 7 days a week, thousands of miles a month. I've driven it everywhere from Florida to the screwed up pot hole filled roads of the north and mid west and everywhere in between. Bottom line: I need something that's going to last. YEARS. Hundreds of thousands of miles. Withstand years of abuse from rough rail road tracks, pot holes, rough roads, etc. with only normal maintenance without anything breaking. I feel the best way to go about it is to use a well built aftermarket cross member/steering rack with factory original Mustang II control arms and spindles, and retain the original style strut rods. Has anyone ever mounted brackets on the frame rails to allow the use of the original Mustang II style strut rods? I found pics on google of people doing it to other full framed cars, but if anyone has done it to a Maverick I'd love to see pics of it and hear how it worked out.
Jamie, Good to see you ... been a while. The Daze website has a good tech article about making adjustables .... http://home.bresnan.net/~dazed/adjustable
I was thinking about redoing the suspension gear on mine as well. Thanks for the ideas on options availible.
I bought my Mustang II style crossmember from Full Tilt Street Rods out of Colorado. I chose the version that accepted all stock Mustang II components including upper and lower control arms and full size coil springs since that was also the way I was originally going to go. I since changed my ideas around somwhat. The way you want to go about it doing it, I don't see your Maverick knowing any different that it has a nice sturdy stock Mustang II suspension under it. In fact, it should hold up even better than a stock Mustang II due to the heavy crossmember made out of new welded steel and not that pressed crap that came stock
I've seen it done before but it winds up not fitting exactly like it did in a Mustang II and people add pieces of steel here and there to it to make it fit - kind of scary if you ask me It's not worth it considering the strength of a brand new steel cradle
To me, the 'perfect', though obviously non existent setup would be something that uses like a fox body lower control arm and the Mustang II upper control arm/top hat setup. It would just be ideal and damn near indestructible. If you're not going to have a strut rod, that lower control arm needs to be mounted in two separate places with two separate bolts IMO. I guess I'll start keeping an eye out in the junkyards for a Mustang II to rob the stock control arms and stuff off of. I've seen dozens in there over the last 5 years or so, but now that I'm looking for one it'll probably be a while before one pops up again.
