Hey Jeff,

Welcome to the site!

The front suspension on this car has been kind of a roller-coaster ride, to say the least.       We started with a Stainless Steel Brakes front disc conversion, but the kit placed the '67 Mustang style caliper on the front side of the stock spindle, and I believe it uses a Mustang style rotor with a spacer.     However, the front mount caliper means you cannot run a sway bar on the car, and I didn't like that aspect.    So I built my own caliper brackets and moved the calipers to the rear side of the spindles, and installed the sway bar.     The rear brakes are Stainless big-bearing Ford 9" to fit the rear axle.    I think they use a Lincoln Mark VII or T-bird caliper.   None of the brakes worked that great until the Hydroboost unit was installed!

We're still running the Gearheads upper control arms and rear sway bar, which is really a very nice piece.    We returned to the stock lower control arms because we had some ride height issues... it seemed that even with our 2" dropped Eaton springs, the tubular arms wanted to raise the car.     We sent the arms back to them, I don't know if they ever resolved it.

We run stock, cheap, Monroe shocks all the way around and the ride is great.    The stock shocks work fine with a 2" drop spring.   

Keep us posted... I don't have alot of time today, but I'll gladly work with you on more ideas later.

Thanks!

- KO

Then I'd suggest an overdrive setup and a Hydroboost unit as mandatory upgrades.     They make the car a million times better to drive.    Keep us posted on the project!

- KO

Hey Jeff,

I once had a set of Granada spindles, but I wasn't sure about the geometry on the front end.    At the time, when you compared the Granada spindle with the stock Galaxie spindle, the Granada appeared to have radically different camber, and I wasn't sure it was the  right approach.    I also tried a set of '73 T-bird / Cougar spindles, with the lure of large factory disc brakes, but again, the spindle just didn't look like a good replacement.     It turns out that others have used the Cougar piece and have not been happy.

The Gearheads lowers elevated the car because their spring perch was higher than stock and thus compressed the spring more, lifting the car.   It wasn't a geometry issue... be sure to check and compare your lowers to the new ones.   I have some photos with measurements I took to show the people at Gearheads the difference, but they claimed the arms were the same.    I ended up sending them the lowers back.   

I don't know what to tell you for the brakes.    I'm not sold on other spindles replacing the stockers just to get a caliper to fit.    I think the best route would be to make some brackets to get some C5 Corvette calipers on oversized Mustang rotors, and use a Hydroboost.     Then just use a lowering spring and you're there.     The key to the rotor is the ring-spacer that SSBC sells with their kit.. maybe you could source the spacer from them, get the rotor part number, and then see if a larger rotor is available.     I modified my caliper brackets as I stated in the earlier post, which wasn't hard to do.   

What's your time frame, and do you have a welder, plasma, etc?

Here's another option, Scarebird Mechanical makes some caliper brackets (and the spacer) to complete a disc conversion using stock spindles, but the calipers they use are pretty non-sexy single piston GM stuff.    I've been leaning on them to make the brackets for C4 or C5 calipers, but I'm not sure they're going to...



You can see their stuff at:

http://scarebird.com/mediac/400_0/media/GXY~with~bracket.JPG

Hey Jeff,

I've added the upper and lower control arm install videos here for you.     As for the sway bar, I'm actually running an old Quickor suspension Galaxie bar.    I don't know if they still make them, but the front is a large bar.    If I recall, the Gearheads front bar is made to work with their lower arms, through the use of some right-angle tabs you need to mount to the arms.    I don't know if a stock or stock replacement bar will work, but I'm not sure why it wouldn't.    The Quickor bar mounted in the stock locations.   

The rear of the car is running the Gearheads sway bar, and it's excellent!   

I think I recall what you're talking about now... let me see what we did there and I'll get back to you.   

Jeff,

We actually transplanted the entire 1963 Mercury dash into the '62.   This way, we got all the trim, the heater controls, the gauges, the whole shot.   It actually bolted in, but we had to modify the wiring connector pin-outs to match the ford, and the dash to door fit is a little off, but the rest was a very clean install.    I don't know if the Merc cluster will swap in your Galaxie dash, but the entire dash will swap in with a little work. 

Give it a shot.   The '63 Ford has a different hole than the '62, so yours might just slip right in.

The funny thing about the regulator is that we built a couple and even have a video on the site on how to do it, but we wanted to install it in a better case and never got it back in the car.    My own fault on that one!