Crown Vic IFS Swap

That’s good. No way would I raise the ride height. Should be all inprovements now with the narrowed arms. Looking forward to the install
 
Fatman 1" Narrowed Crown Vic Control Arms

They showed up today. A little disappointed I've got to say. ;m The fab work is great, but the design isn't.There's some interference between the lower arm/stock knuckle and the lower is very narrow where the shock passes through it. Would be fine for the stock strut but there's issues with the lower spring seat on the Ridetech coil overs clearing the arm - shocks that Fatman stated would fit on their website. If you run the lower spring seat up high enough, you're good,but the height the seat will be at is determined by spring length/rate/vehicle weight, so it'll take some mock up work to see. Probs with the lower shock mounting hardware also.

I can fix and deal with all of this, but feel I shouldn't have to on a $1000 set of control arms. I get having probs mixing various aftermarket parts together, but dam!








Can't even install one of the bolts for the unit hub:



Tight:




Also was out on Sat beating on the truck a bit and now have some antifreeze leaking at the front of the motor. No more than usual in the overflow bottle so I'm hoping it's not being pushed out by boost. :blink: I'll be looking into it tomorrow.
 
Did you happen to measure before and after to see how much narrower the track actually came out to? Suppose to be 1” per side correct?


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I'm happier with them today. Looks like the issues won't be a big deal.

I weighed the arms on an old bathroom scale and was happy that the Fatman lowers are the same as the stock cast alum arms at 14lbs. The uppers are 5lbs and the cast steel stock ones are 6lbs.
 
Briansshop said:
I'm happier with them today. Looks like the issues won't be a big deal.

I weighed the arms on an old bathroom scale and was happy that the Fatman lowers are the same as the stock cast alum arms at 14lbs. The uppers are 5lbs and the cast steel stock ones are 6lbs.
Click to expand...

That’s good to hear. Seems like your the guinea pig for a lot of parts. Like the bump steer kit.
 
Sandblasted so they'll hold on to the paint better,and sprayed with hammer tone.





Cut the outer edge of the ball joint cup down so it doesn't hit the knuckle and allows all of the unit hub bolts to be installed.

 
Back together and waiting.



The lower mount spacers that Fatman supplied were for the stock struts and the spacers that RideTech supplied are for the stock arms. :blink: Got some from Allstar Perf that work, 1" long and used some smaller spacers to fine tune the front/back clearance of the shock and control arm.



The minimum spring preload to keep the spring seat away from the CA:



No prob getting the front lower unit hub bolt installed now:

 
How much total travel do those struts have? It doesn’t look like much and if you figure sitting at right height you will be in the middle of the travel it doesn’t look like it will have much movement before bottoms out.
 
^ Yeah,I'm concerned about the travel Jamie. Doesn't look like much. Hoping that the wheel being about 12" outboard of the shock will end up in a fair amount of wheel travel.
 
Brian if you are concerned about travel before hitting the stop then why would you not use the lower hole on the control arm for mounting the coilover? I would assume that's why it's there, lowering the position of the tube of the shock in relative to the hub height for lowered applications.

Edit: Nevermind, I see now that the spring perch would hit if tried using the lower hole with the current springs. Hence, why you said go to shorter springs if you needed to lower it more. My bad.
 
I don’t understand why they didn’t make the lower arm wider in the area where the strut goes so the spring (and adjusters) fit between the tubes???
 
Jamie V said:
I don’t understand why they didn’t make the lower arm wider in the area where the strut goes so the spring (and adjusters) fit between the tubes???
Click to expand...

The design will work fine with the stock strut since it's just a small dia tube at the bottom,non adjustable. But yes,they could have made it wider for coil overs. The RideTech design is at fault also. Look at the wasted space at the top of the shock. The entire shock could be 3" higher and that would move the lower spring mount well above the CA. If it all works together,great,but we'll see,might have to go to a different custom pair of coil overs with the upper mount higher.
 
I was looking at exactly that where the adjustment knob is. The shock travel could be much longer too if they moved the spring up further.
 
Since the Turbo section is locked down due to spam, I guess I'll post here. Adding some double adjustable QA1s out back. No room in front of the axle for any available off the shelve shock,so mounting behind the axle. Got the lower mounts tacked in place tonight.




 
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