John S's Journal

I decided to tackle the front suspension today. I’ve had the front suspension from the parted out ‘70 waiting in the wings while I dealt with the engine bay cleaning and painting. The plan was to get that sandblasted and powdered coated or painted with POR-15 so today I took the crossmember, spring pans, wishbone arms and a couple of misc. pieces down to the guy that did my wheels to see what he would charge to do the job. All in and done for $130 so I left them there and we’ll see how they look next week. I figured by the time I had them sandblasted and then bought the POR-15 I would be spending about the same and a whole bunch of time brushing that stuff on. Money well spent in my book.

With that done, it was time to drop the whole front end on the GT as a unit. Off came the sway bar followed by the steering rack, separated the tie rod ends, moved the brake lines from the back of the crossmember, disconnected the flex hoses from the hard lines, put the jack up under the crossmember, rattle gunned the 4 nuts topside and dropped it to the ground. Didn’t put up a fight. The tie rods ends complied with the pickle fork treatment and it really didn’t take long to have it all laying on the ground. I’ll strip this one down but don’t plan on using much of it. The Armstrong levers from my ’70 are all cleaned up so I’ll use those. I’ll assess the swivel axles from both cars and use the best ones and likewise the wishbone pivots. I’ve got a SuperPro suspension kit that I’ll install when everything is back from the powder coater. In the meantime, there are some things to take care of so I’m ready to go next week. I think I’ll put the crossmember in first and then build it all up from there.