Suspension help please.

Badlilstang

Founding Member
Feb 21, 2001
1,606
0
37
Spring , Texas
Helped a buddy do some suspension work on his 88 LX.. when we dug into the front end we found original shocks we replaced along with some C-springs, MM Caster Camber plates, and polyurethane spring bushings which seems to have helped the car out a lot. What I did notice is both ball joints had the boots split open on them which allows the grease to flow out. I know this isn't a good thing and they need to be replaced before the alignment. Will newer control arms off an 03 cobra fit the fox body? It does have 96 front spindles on it as part of the 5 lug conversion but not sure if they used newer control arms with it. I ask this because of the great deal I can get on these control arms from ford at about 120$ for the pair with ball joints already pressed in. Also his sway bar bushings are shot but I cant tell if this is the original sway bar or not as its pretty big around. Because the car was lowered about an 1-1.25" should I use shorter sway bar end links? Also the main sway bar bushings that hold it to the body of the car are completely shot but I don't know what size to get. Thanks for any help with this. Its been a long time since I've worked on a fox. :hail2:
 
I'm not sure if those control arms will bolt up, but that is probably a stock sway bar if it's a 5.0. They came from the factory with a pretty damn large sway bar...Probably a good idea to replace those bushings. Energy suspension makes replacements.
 
Will they "fit", yes. Will the car be able to drive on the road? Well....

You MUST have the FOX FCAs. The 94-04 FCAs are ~1.3" longer. That creates a LOT of problems. With "C" springs, the car couldn't even move without slicing the front tires. The 94-04 FCAs move the wheels OUT and DROPS the car from 0.5" to 1".

For sn95 FCAs, you must ALSO get a bumpsteer kit because the outer-tie rod will be too short. This means the MM-TR6 kit and getting the spindles PROFESSIONAL drilled, or the MM-TR6 kit and another kit that has tapered bolt ends. But, the tapered bolt ends do NOT allow enough adjustment to get "minimal" bumpsteer.