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With the new shop opening soon, we have started preparing our track car to compete again. We now sell SPL Parts, so we decided to upgrade all of the suspension arms and bushings to demonstrate their products. The image shows most of the SPL catalog of parts; upper control arms, lower control arm bushings, front compression rod bushings, rear monoball knuckle bushings, and rear camber / traction / toe arms.

The spherical bearings are very good for the race track, but are very noisy and rough on the street. The car is only used for racing now, so I am looking forward to the more rigid ride quality! The upper control arms allow for very easy caster and camber adjustment, and will allow much more adjustment for alignment settings compared to the factory arms.

Here is the stock front suspension -


The lower arm with the new SPL spherical bearings pressed into place.


SPL upper control arm and lower arm reinstalled.

To install the new rear suspension, I first had to cutout and remove the factory wheel wells and install a modified frame rail. The larger wheel wells and frame rails will allow for larger wheels and tires. Once the frame rail modification was complete, I removed the rear support area to make room for the new crossmember. Here you can see the rear area that was removed.


Here is the new crossmember trimmed and fit into place. The new crossmember is the main piece for the new suspension. Once it is installed, the rest of the suspension install should be a little quicker.

I recently purchased another Miller product, the Miller 625 X-treme Plasma Cutter! I've used it for about 1 month now, and it is great! It will make the work I need to do on the Mustang much easier and cleaner than using a cutoff wheel.

In my home garage I had an old workbench that came with the house. It was made of cheap materials and was not very good to work on, especially for any projects that require welding. I broke apart the old table and built a very heavy duty welding table to replace it.

This picture shows the start of the frame and the test fitting of the tool cabinets. I also added red lines showing the location of all support beams that are welded onto the final table. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures before I put the table top on.


Here is the table with the 1/2" steel table top welded into place. This was a difficult task since the table top had a slight bow from being sheered. I had to place the bowed table top on the table frame and use a heavy chain and auto jack to force the table top flat. I then welded it to the table frame from the center out. I would have liked for the table top to be 1 piece, but it was too heavy for me to work with, so I had to have it cut in 2.


Here is the almost finished table, it still needs one more coat of paint. I added front locking doors that are fully framed and skinned with 1/4" steel. I also enclosed the entire storage area so there is no access from the rear or sides. The tool chests are also bolted to the frame from the inside, so they cannot be easily removed.