Little bit of a tune up

Well after being tired of getting understeer I finally bought another set of Steeda X2 Ball Joints. I put them on my last Mustang and they helped a ton with understeer so I hope to see the same. Also went a heat range colder on spark plugs to see if I can get this old NPI to get some more power. Got the NGK's TR6...and as always pics or it didn't happen.

cool cool... love my balljoints... great improvement over stock, especially with my 2" drop... install was a snap once I figured out the way Ford engineered the spindles to come off...

Haha is there a secret because I always just used a pitman arm puller.

Hmmm the understeer got worse...

yamanx wrote:Hmmm the understeer got worse...

dont those correct camber? if so i could have told you that was gonna happen. camber is your friend when you want handling.

What are your current suspension mods Geoff?

They are supposed to raise the spindle relative to the ball joint pivot-point and increase the roll center and place it back in to range.

But right now it is really quick with steering and rolls a lot. Also it is wearing on the outside of the tires telling me it has too much positive camber which is only good for straight line traction. I will go play with it some today and see about giving it more negative camber and see if I can get some of the corner traction back out of it. As of right now it is TERRIBLE. Tires squealing going 25MPH on the ramp from the BA to 169.

And ya I am going to call Griggs tomorrow and see if I even needed the ball joints and maybe just need to adjust something else. Currently the car has (All Griggs) Caster Camber Plates, Tubular A-Arms, Tubular K-Member, Through bolt Bump Steer kit, Torque Arm, Panhard Bar, and the Koni coil overs.

Any shock/strut or spring upgrades?

these are designed to counteract the effects of a lowered car through the geometry out of whack. If you didn't need them, they could raise it up higher than stock which comes with its own set of problems.

Yes it has Koni coil overs which I have set to lower it about 2 inches.

My guess is the camber plates are out of adjustment. May just need a new alignment done. Or if the A arms are adjustable they could be to blame if out of spec.

yamanx wrote:Yes it has Koni coil overs which I have set to lower it about 2 inches.

Oh yea. Missed that part. Thought it said Coil covers, started thinking engine mods, LOL

Haha yes everyone knows coil covers make your car faster!

But I called Griggs yesterday and he told me that I need to change the spring rate in the rear of the car to 250 from 200. And the reason it is doing it is that the car has too much grip in the rear end....so sounds like I wanna switch back to stock ball joints haha.

Oh, you know, they do bolt to the engine, LOL

Alright well I swapped back to the stock ball joints and now it handles like it should again. Man that took forever to find the secret to separating the spindle from the ball joint, my pitman arm puller trick only worked one time haha.

Easy once you know how. Remove rotor, rotate spindle to where hub is facing back of car, hit nub with rubber mallet in upward motion and it will pop right off

Haha shit wish mine was that easy. I had to prop the A-arm with a jack stand and thread the nut on till it hit the nylon then hit the top of the nut with a 5# mallet. I tried everything else and these mugs would not come off but with 2 good whacks they came right off.

Wow crazy