I figured the solution was to air bag the car. I threw around doing a 4 link. I ordered a triangulated 4 link kit and found something out, UNIVERSAL MEANS FITS NOTHING! So I went to the drawing board. I got really interested in road racing stuff and studied countless hours and found the 3 link had better packaging, especially if I wanted to go to air bags.
I started by cutting out the factory shock mounts. You can see the small stub left when I cut this out. I built an arch to base the whole thing off of. The pipes sticking up is the height of the airbag, representing the ride height, which is how I determined where to weld in the airbag mount. The gap from the bottom of the airbag mount to the top of the pipe is because the weight is off the rear end and the suspension hanging.
Here is a mock up of the 3-link suspension with the Watts link. I added arches from the main arch to tie into the air bag mounts to support them and to add shock mounts.
This picture shows a mock up of the 3-link, This also shows the raised trans tunnel tacked into place.
I this picture you can clearly see why my passengers were complaining of a large bang. The dark spots is where the rearend was hitting the floor pan. The strange part is, I found the driveshaft hit the floor before the rearend hit the bump stops. Perhaps the Edsels were not created with the best of quality control, but I feel I can improve on where Ford failed and make a cooler, better driving car.
Using the piece I cut out and shaping it to fit, I added 2 inches in length and a tapering strip about an inch and a half at the largest spot. With the shocks topped out, the rearend just barely touched the rearend, I could loosely fit my hand between the tunnel and the driveshaft..
A problem I ran into was that I didn't want to run the exhaust close to the airbags. I found the Kickup in the frame was a perfect spot to to go to the outside of the frame. I removed the leaf spring and hangers which gave me almost 3 inches to run 2 inch pipes. I would have alot of room to run 2 inch pipes.
This is the pipe I built using 2 inch mandrel U-bends. This pipe runs along the outside of the frame.
I wrapped the pipe to keep the heat down between the tires and the pipe.
After driving this car for a couple of years, I was starting to get reduced tank capacity. I couldn't fill it past 3/4 of a tank without it leaking. I had always thought the sending unit was leaking. Well, when I pulled the tank I found this, someone epoxied a pick up tube through the top of the tank and plugged the original pick up. After digging further, I found that the tank was coated internally and that the original pickup was probably plugged. Unfortunately this is not the correct way to repair a tank. Because of the internal coating, I couldn't weld on this tank.
After doing research on tank dimensions, I found that a 63 Galaxie tank was relatively the same size and shape as the original. I was able to make it fit with slight modification to the strap mounts. After test fitting, I found that the filler neck was a little bit short so I cut the filler neck off the original tank and welded it to the new one.
After the tank was sorted out, I decided that the drovers rear quarter was the best place to put the compressor and tank.
I cut a piece of plywood to mesh with the beads rolled in the floor. I also took a pice of plank, routered the edges so it was rounded off for the compressor to fit on and act as a mount for the tank legs. On the other end of the tank mount, which mounts to the floor, it tapered so I cut the floor, raised it so it was flat and welded some nuts on the bottom.
The mount coated with urethane box liner.
The finished product, the tank and compressor installed. The edges of the wood was urethaned to the floor to blend in when when the box liner was applied.
The lower a-arms had the original bushing in them. They were very badly worn. Along witht that you could see that the bump stop is rubbed off from them pointing so high with just being on cut springs.
Since I will be running shock waves, I plated in the bottom of the spring pockets for added strength since the entire weight of the car will be on this point.
Since I am running Fat man lowering spindles to correct the suspension geometry, the original bump stops needed to be removed. I filled and welded the ends to keep the strength, since I will be running a inch a a quarter sway bar on the front.
The new versus the old sway bar.
This explains the loose front end! The original upper ball joints! All the ball joints, bushings, tie rod ends are replaced. This thing should handle like crazy now!!!
All painted up and ready for installation!
The fatman spindles allow me to upgrade to disk brakes on the front. this car did not stop well, so I took the opportunity to add a vacuum boosted master cylinder. This was not exactly easy to install since the shifter linkage was in the way, so I took a couple of hydraulic rod ends and a rod, and bent it in such a way that it connected to the back of the shifter linkage giving an inch of room. I found that the shifter linkage that was there was tack welded and cracked. So, probably best that I changed them out.
