Suspension, Steering and Brakes

It's great to have the car looking good, but it has to be a good runner, too.  I've been working on and off this past week on replacing all the components of the front suspension, steering and brakes.  I did one side at a time so I could use the other side for reference in putting things back together. 

The one part of the job that worried me was replacing the coil springs.  Brian had bought new springs, so the old ones had to come out.   In my research of this on the Internet I came on numerous posts warning about what a potentially dangerous job this is, where the spring under tension can get loose and cause damage and injury.  There is a specially made spring compressor for the vintage Mustangs, but it costs a lot of money for a one-time use.  We had asked the paint and body shop to replace the springs, but he declined on the basis of not having the proper tool.  I finally discovered that O'Reilley (Oh, Really?) Auto Parts had a compressor that would work, and they rented it out.  Actually, you pay a deposit and get the whole amount back when you return the tool.  So, after removing the brake, lower control arm, strut, stabilizer bar link and wheel spindle, I got to this point, where the spring compressor is installed and ready to start compressing the spring:

Notice the bump stop is broken.  I had to get another one of those and replace it after I got the spring out. 

Next step is to ratchet the spring compressor nut, which draws the fingers holding the coils upwards:

 After the spring is lifted off the lower spring perch far enough, the upper control arm can be removed, and then the spring compressor relaxed and the spring removed:

There were a bunch of wheel alignment shims behind the upper control arm and they all fell out.  That's probably OK, though, because the wheel alignment is certainly going to be changed with all the new parts and will have to be done over. 

Here is the new spring ready to be compressed.  It takes a lot of turns on the compressor screw to get enough clearance to put the new upper control arm with the spring perch back in.  I finally got smart and used my air wrench to turn the nut. 

In taking all the old parts off, I discovered that every bushing was completely worn out, and sometimes even missing.  The car must have been a real evil handling devil towards the end of it's last life. 

Here is a pic I took after I got it all back together.  I'm also practicing labeling parts of a photo, so click on the picture to see this clearly.  These are just some of the parts replaced.  All the steering linkage was also made new.  The shocks go down through the middle of the spring and attach to the spring perch at the bottom, but we don't have new shocks yet. 

Here is a picture Carolyn took with her camera last weekend, just to document that I was there too.

Next, I'm thinking of taking on the side window and door window and latch installation.  This is scary.