1970 Mustang AJE front suspension conversion.

Ill get some pics of mine tonigt motor is out so you can see it all very well

I'd get rid of the shock towers and attach the struts to the front bar.... You'll gain a lot of room for headers and lose some more weight off the front...

Yeah towers need to go if you want a decent header to ever go on it

richter69 wrote:Those struts those put in those deals suck imo.... No adjustment. I found one of my spindles bent ghe otherday and im in the process of redoing it to use a reg bolt in fox strut.

The part of the spindle where the bearings sit? They told me if I needed to I good get a strange da cartridges for $700. I'll wait and see how these act. Maybe not a big deal on a 9.70 deal. Running 10.0 index. Later plans call for a removable front end,A460's,custom headers and get rid of the rest of the towers,bracing and I see a lot of steel that can go in the cowl/dash area. I only have a couple weeks left.

Dave C. wrote:I'd get rid of the shock towers and attach the struts to the front bar.... You'll gain a lot of room for headers and lose some more weight off the front...

I will. I'm just running out of time right now. I really only meant to do the bolt in thing with the kit but took it a little bit farther. I want to look at dropping the engine down also. Its sitting pretty high up. The bottom of the pan above the kmember is probably 5" up.

richter69 wrote:Yeah towers need to go if you want a decent header to ever go on it

Fiberglass fenders and side exits for the win.

no room for side exits out the front

richter69 wrote:no room for side exits out the front

Yep, it would be on the rear. Along with about 700 more hp. Some nitrous, A460's and a cage upgrade. Wiring also. I still have the stock junk on there. Hopefully next winter for some of it. My first race is March 22nd and I need to get at least 1 TNT in by then.

keep posting pictures

looking good , i dont understand some of the comments .... have to lose the tops of the strut towers for good header clearence ?. i thought the whole idea of the aje was fox suspension to get more room inside the engine bay as well .

Im only asking because this is the kit im looking to do .....the more i hear the more i lean towards a SBF for my car .

I will still be cutting more of the tower back. I'm just waiting until I get the tubing. I saw on another thread on here where somebody was asking about the clearance between the headers and the frame. I'll post some pics when I get there. Also something about the headers not fitting with a powerglide but I havent seen any problems with either yet. The steering rod may be an issue on the 2 tubes on the drivers side. I hope to find a lot of this out tonight if I work on it.

It looks like two of the tubes on the Hooker 6224 headers are hitting the frame on the drivers side and 1 on the passenger side. The 2 on the drivers side are also in the way of the steering shaft. It looks like the fox body column is closer in or farther back from the transmission. My shaft needs to run right through where the 2 tubes are. The one tube on the passenger side is barely up against the frame. Oh what fun this is.


I have the 2 tubes out in this pic. You can see where they slip in.


This is the passenger side. Look close here because it is the very back tube.

These headers to powerglide is no problem.

Here is something to be aware of. My original mounts had the engine/trans sitting to far forward in the car. The oil pan would not clear the brace on the kmember and be able to get the flywheel in the trans without taking the trans loose and slide it back. I decided to slide the trans back and redo the mount. Since I had to redo the midplate and a new motor plate.

I hope all this helps people in the future. Its definitely not a "bolt in" deal. AJE wanted this info also. So it should help them in the future.

Adding some small OD (say 5/8" to 1") internal and/or external tube bracing to help support the trimmed towers is probably worth looking into IMO. If you decide to keep the towers (vs completely removing them and mounting the strut tops directly to the forward support bars) the extra tube bracing should allow you to remove even more tower material (vs what you have already removed so far) from the lower section of the towers for even more header room. And of course the better you tie the forward support bars directly to the tower cap structure, the smaller OD tubing you should be able to use for the extra internal/external tube braces.



At the very least if you only add one tube brace inside each tower (running down from the under side of the tower cap to the OEM frame), you probably still need to add another tube brace outside the tower running down from the forward support bar it's self to the OEM frame. And if the front of the forward support bars are going to attach to the OEM frame closer to the radiator (and farther from the front motorplate mount area), you might think about adding another small brace in the area of the motor plate mount to help tie all three structures (motor plate mount, OEM frame, forward support bar) all together at the same time. Or you could bend the forward support bar angle more so that they attach to the OEM frame right at he front motor plate mount.

OK Dave, sounds like you are ready to do the install on my car! I'm still thinking about this swap...

living in mass if i do bbf with this setup

i will drop car off at TUBUALR automotive and have a custom set done maybe sopme fender exits   

DILLIGASDAVE wrote:Adding some small OD (say 5/8" to 1") internal and/or external tube bracing to help support the trimmed towers is probably worth looking into IMO. If you decide to keep the towers (vs completely removing them and mounting the strut tops directly to the forward support bars) the extra tube bracing should allow you to remove even more tower material (vs what you have already removed so far) from the lower section of the towers for even more header room. And of course the better you tie the forward support bars directly to the tower cap structure, the smaller OD tubing you should be able to use for the extra internal/external tube braces.



At the very least if you only add one tube brace inside each tower (running down from the under side of the tower cap to the OEM frame), you probably still need to add another tube brace outside the tower running down from the forward support bar it's self to the OEM frame. And if the front of the forward support bars are going to attach to the OEM frame closer to the radiator (and farther from the front motorplate mount area), you might think about adding another small brace in the area of the motor plate mount to help tie all three structures (motor plate mount, OEM frame, forward support bar) all together at the same time. Or you could bend the forward support bar angle more so that they attach to the OEM frame right at he front motor plate mount.

Thanks Dave, this is what I was looking for. As far as the radiator support,I think I'll just run a small "1/2" tube vertical from the frame up to the corner. The steel fenders,old inner fender lip and the forward bar back near the strut top should be enough to support it. My concern would be on a hard landing after a wheelstand with the weight of the headlights,buckets, etc. coming down as the suspension bottoms out.

Thats what i did it made it pretty sturdy....



I picked up some slick spherical upper mounts for my new struts tonight, this changeover has been about 800 bucks worth but its gonna be worth it to have an adj strut on it now.

Btw ive done enough hard landings to smash a pan, bend spindles, break grill, unplug purge valve..... The core support and headlights are fine lol.

Fenders are just bolted to the core support at the front and the reg bolts at the rear, no additional support along the lips needed.

YellowStangDuane wrote:OK Dave, sounds like you are ready to do the install on my car! I'm still thinking about this swap...

Duane there is an open spot in the shop that should fit the YellowStang no problem.   

What I'm still curious about is where the ride height will sit on a 69/70 Stang with the AJE stuff that also keeps the OEM tower-tower caps (and this thread should help   ). I have seen other years/models with the AJE stuff & OEM towers, but IIRC not the 69/70. And also curious if there is a big/small/any difference in ride height between their kits using their own fabbed spindle/strut assembly vs their kits using the OEM Fox or SN95 spindle/strut assemblies.

richter69 wrote:.......I picked up some slick spherical upper mounts for my new struts tonight.......

It sucks that Ford decided to design their OEM Mustang spindles with an "off centerline" offset strut-to-spindle attachment point which increases the need for a spherical ball upper mount to deal with the strut C/L misalignment-sweep when turning. Things would have been so much easier if they had just mounted the strut to the spindle on center with the top mount-to-ball joint centerline like a true McPherson strut design.

Also sucks that AJE doesn't make an adjustable cartridge insert for their own strut design. I wonder why they don't?  

You would think when first designing their own strut/spindle design, the guys at AJE would have "adjustable valving" at the top of the list of things to include in their design.    

I'm glad I stopped by today, haven't been on this site in quite a while.I have seen you post on YB and Maybe IndexRacer.net? Good to here you will be running 10.00 Index this season, are you heading to MD. or where? I have talked myself out of trying this same thing on my Cougar, alot of work. I put my Capri together because it was too easy and lighter. I'll be following this project. Some people don't understand keeping a Street Car feel to such a classic body style. Installing a complete tube frame Mustang II A-Arm style clip just wouldn't look correct on such a nice car. Keep posting and good luck.

richter69 wrote:Btw ive done enough hard landings to smash a pan, bend spindles, break grill, unplug purge valve..... The core support and headlights are fine lol.

Fenders are just bolted to the core support at the front and the reg bolts at the rear, no additional support along the lips needed.

I'll take a look at it today. I like that small support. It is something I can do later after the major stuff is out the way. I saw a car a while back that had skids on the bottom of the frame for the wheelstands. "no wheelie bar class".

DILLIGASDAVE wrote:

YellowStangDuane wrote:OK Dave, sounds like you are ready to do the install on my car! I'm still thinking about this swap...

Duane there is an open spot in the shop that should fit the YellowStang no problem.   

What I'm still curious about is where the ride height will sit on a 69/70 Stang with the AJE stuff that also keeps the OEM tower-tower caps (and this thread should help   ). I have seen other years/models with the AJE stuff & OEM towers, but IIRC not the 69/70. And also curious if there is a big/small/any difference in ride height between their kits using their own fabbed spindle/strut assembly vs their kits using the OEM Fox or SN95 spindle/strut assemblies.

I can say that the directions say to use my original castle nut on the spindles. Well,I sold them with the old stuff. I went to Napa and what they had wouldn't work. It ended up being a Chevy size castle nut. I'll have to check the thread size and get back.