My 72 Mustang ragtop

[TheJ]

Welcome, awesome car.

 

[mach71351c]

::welcome::From So Cal. Yes keep it bright lime. Nice choice of wheels.

 

[murstang]

Welcome. Nice ride! Do you mind providing info on your drop and wheel size etc.

No problem. The wheels are 20"x8.5" and 20"x10" Foose Nitrous. They were originally slated for a 2010 Mustang so to make the offset work for me I had to run 1" spacers to push them out to fill the wheel well. I had a set of 255-35's mounted just to check clearances. I will move up to 265 or 275's in the rear and down to 235's in the front. Lowering the rear suspension was straight forward. Just 2" lowering blocks and making sure my pinion angle is correct. The front has shorter coils for now and I am thinking of air ride, but what I really want to find are dropped spindles. Any body have a line on these? I also had to modify the shock covers/suspension stop mounts for clearance. The front tires just touch the inner fenders lock to lock. Hope this helps.

 

[vertstang73]

Welcome aboard and nice car! We like!

 

[luxstang]

Thanks Mike, but my car has a long way to go (both money and time) before I'll ever park it next to so many of the other cars on this site, including yours. I checked out the pics of your ragtop more than once when mine was ripped apart. You have a very cool ride!

Why thank you very much. I sent your pics to some friends of mine telling them "See, this is how I want mine!!!! "

 

[luxstang]

Hi Murstang

Could you please do me a favor and measure the distance between the tops of your car's front and rear wheel arches to the floor?

 

[murstang]

Hi Murstang

Could you please do me a favor and measure the distance between the tops of your car's front and rear wheel arches to the floor?

No problem Mike. The wheelwell arches measure 24" to the ground in front and 24.5" in the rear. My 20's may be a touch bigger in diameter than your 18's at 26.5" overall, so I measured the axle centerlines to the wheelwell arch and they are 11.25" front and 11.75" rear. Trust me, this is as low as you want to go with stock suspension components. I'm at the limits as far as travel and geometry are concerned so I'll be making some changes this off season, and keep the same stance. Thankfully I live in the far southwest region of British Columbia so the roads are decent. Hope this helps out.

 

[luxstang]

No problem Mike. The wheelwell arches measure 24" to the ground in front and 24.5" in the rear. My 20's may be a touch bigger in diameter than your 18's at 26.5" overall, so I measured the axle centerlines to the wheelwell arch and they are 11.25" front and 11.75" rear. Trust me, this is as low as you want to go with stock suspension components. I'm at the limits as far as travel and geometry are concerned so I'll be making some changes this off season, and keep the same stance. Thankfully I live in the far southwest region of British Columbia so the roads are decent. Hope this helps out.

Thank you for the info.

By the way, your wheels and mine are exactly the same diameter, as 255/45/18 = 285/40/18 = 255/35/20 . (Diameter that is, not width. The 285 is wider of course)

Both of our wheels are larger in diameter than stock, so you could drop the front of your car further by reducing the diameter of the wheel, at least that´s what I´m gonna do with mine to get the rake. (plus the shortened springs of course.)

Problem is, I gotta get rid of the long tube headers first, as I need more ground clearance.

Another problem we have here is inspection. If I lower it too far I will not pass the inspection and I´ll have the registration revoked. We don´t want that to happen!!

I can go a little lower, but probably not all the way. We´ll see.

 

[71_badmach]

::welcome:: Nice looking car! I'm still amazed at the color variations there were back then.