59 SWB 32v 4.6 5speed CV front Mark8rear on bags

[59F100]

Wife was wanting a project rod to have for herself and we found this gem at the Goodguy's KC swap meet. Bought her, rented a truck and trailer since we were 250 miles from home in a car.
sept 1
Developed a plan after quite a bit of research. 95 Lincoln Mark VIII engine, and rear suspension donor, 00 Mustang T45 5sp, 05 Crown Vic front suspension. Started on the build Sept 12 by tearing down the Lincoln which was the most complicated engine removal I've ever attempted. Blocked up the truck on stands and mock the front suspension up under the truck and decided it wasn't for us. Tires were pushed out too far to get the truck as low as I wanted.


So After being to it wouldn't work, I narrowed the crossmember 6.125" which is how much narrower a Mustang rack is than the CV rack at the tierod pivots.





Built notched sections for each side of the front of the frame, welded them in then cut the old sections of frame out and fully boxed the frame front to back of the cab.



Wife did the majority of the cleaning of the engine, trans, suspension, firewall, frame, etc....





After pondering the rear frame situation and the condition of the frame being pretty rough from rust and the rear cross member was bent from it being stuck. I decided it would be simpler with better results to cut it off and start from scratch.
Mock up





rear air bag stand/spacer

custom fuel tank built by one of my best friends Blake Hughes owner of 417Motorsports.net custom fab shop specializing in modernizing older cars and latemodel custom turbo fabrication. Tank mounts on drivers side between frame and driveshaft, filler goes through floor behind seat and connects to stock cab filler neck.


80 Freightliner air tank and compressor under passenger side out floor.

Water neck mods

Originally was going to powder coat the frame but decided it was going to take too much turn around time I didn't have. So my buddy Shawn and I etch primed and Duplicolor bed coated it. Not sure I'm going to be happy with cleaning it up after road dirt gets on it, but it's tough.




Wilwood pedals/masters, speedway proportioning valve, biodo line lock, manual hydro lock on rear brakes for parking, stock CV front brakes on both ends. Pedals have bias adj. rear master is 1/8" larger than front and proportioning valve, the combo of all 3 should have plenty of adjustment.



Airlift front air shocks


Tilt column and fabbed shifter out of 47 ford 2ton shifter


Ride height pics
dropped

at ride

completely up

Should set 8"to 9" from rocker to ground. Headers are Pacesetter 96-00 Cobra longtubes w/v-bands, titanium ceramic coat and we heated them up and tweaked them a little. Dolphin gauges
and Ez-wire main harness, 88-98 Chevy bench seat, aftermarket air. All new glass and interior trim parts from LMC which has awesome customer service. painting the interior medium gray and leaving the exterior paint as is. Stainless exhaust all the way out the back with a custom defuser.

[FordTruck]

sweet truck!! 417 motorsports aint too far away from me

[caseyj10]

Man, I wish I could find a girl that is interested in working on old trucks with me. Shes gunna have an awesome truck! are those the rims you are planning on using on the truck when its finished?

[Fordnatic]

Awesome!!!

[59F100]

Man, I wish I could find a girl that is interested in working on old trucks with me. Shes gunna have an awesome truck! are those the rims you are planning on using on the truck when its finished?

Actually I/we intended to buy 20" Black FR500 wheels from Late Model Mustangs as they look great and are inexpensive. But Blake had these off his sister's late model Roush car that I borrowed for mock up and I couldn't order custom wheels that fit better. The back spacing is absolutely perfect on the rear. The chrome is peeling bad so I'll have them striped and powder coated (which is expensive/labor intensive).

[59F100]

To answer some questions before they are asked:
The front end narrowing took a LOT of trial and error fitting. It will work perfect and I'm confident will handle better than a Mustang II clip. I would probably not do it again like that. The truck would have been on the road a month ago being driven to Houston for the NMCA race (which was the plan) had I done something simpler such as an earlier CV frame clip or Dakota or Nova/F-body.
The steering column is a ProComp Chinese job that was $179 from Gearhead enterprises out of Iowa. I have a $370 Ididit in my 62 Chevy II and I can tell you you get what you pay for. The cheap 1 will work fine but tilt mech isn't as smooth or robust and it probably won't last 30 years. I wouldn't put one in a 160+MPH street car.
The Chevy seat is like the best/latest model seat for an old truck. It's the right width, easy to mount, has one piece tilt back (40/60 and buckets don't look right in old trucks) and the head rests are simple to remove.
The Lincoln radiator fits like it was made for these trucks. I just removed the spot welded sheetmetal brackets from the core support and used the Lincoln upper mounts on top and a pair of early 90's Taurus upper mounts on the bottom bolting them to the stock core support to frame bolts.
The Mark VIII's 93-95 are OBO I & have no VATS (security), the engine harness is pretty simple and I have notes that another member gave me on harnesses. Me and Cody stripped the stock harness and removed the Evap plugs and a couple of other wires, but there's not much extra in there. I would just use the plugs off the engine harness if done again, which would be a little cleaner and maybe faster.
The master cylinder bores are 7/8" front, 1" rear, 7/8" clutch with a Speedway pull slave on the clutch. I cut part of the cable ear off the mustang bellhousing and welded an aluminum sleeve that I turned in a lathe that the slave cylinder floats in. I'll let everyone know how all the hydraulics work in the next 2 weeks.
The air suspension consists of AirLift SlamAir air shocks in front Long length (i think) stud upper mounting, they come in 4 lengths short, med, long, XL either stud upper or eye upper. I just turned delrin lower bushings that fit shock and a-arm on lower and used the stock CV upper mounting hardware only cut a relief clearance on the upper cushion for the air line fitting. Also ground/clearanced the triangle cuts outs in the aluminum crossmember a little for air bag clearance. These air shocks are almost a bolt in for the CV front suspension and are basically a chrome Rancho RS9000 shock with an air bag on them. They are cheap too I paid $400 for them from some cat on ebay out of Ohio. The rear bags are Slam Specialties RE7 bags with aluminum stand/mounts I made. They have plenty of travel about 8-9" at wheel and I think they will ride nice. the rear shocks are Monroe sensatrac's for 84-87 Corvette rear application, I went through the entire Monroe measurement page and these were almost a bolt on for the lowered rear suspension. If I were building something that sat a little higher I would use something a little longer but these have more travel in a tighter package than the 71-87 2wd half ton chevy shocks that most use on IRS ford rear suspension.

[caseyj10]

those fr500s will look good on it.

[Broncobilly66]

Bump TTT
Any updates on this project?
I was mainly wondering about your air ride setup on the CV frontend. I'm wanting to do the same thing.
Thanks

[Mesjr]

X2 on the airbags up front . Good info . Doing a 68 w/ cv , mark 8 also . I hope to use the mark 8 bags . Got them in and mounts mocked up and cycled them a few times now I have to pull bags out and finish welding mounts in . After that I'm ready to tear it all apart for blasting and paint .

[marz68]

Awesome work!!! What rack and pinion did you use 56F100?