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New Product - Drop Spindles

17K views 61 replies 19 participants last post by  Nailbender 
#1 ·
776920



I have 3 years of my life wrapped up in these. I hired a suspension guru with 40+ years of experience, put them through some solid engineering analysis at my Mustang buddy Andy's firm, then had Matt, our CAD wizard spend 100's of hours drawing these and then handed the data to our CNC guy to create these masterpieces. I'm very proud of them, probably the most in depth and difficult project to date. I hope you like them.

Please visit the site for more information, then let me know if you have any questions.

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#8 ·
How much does it quicken the steering with the shorter arms?
 
#12 ·
Some of Shaun’s customers are Cougar owners!:cool:
I have a bunch of Shaun’s parts on my ‘69 Cougar. They’re very nice and Shaun is great to work with.
I was lucky enough to see these when I was at SoT world HQ recently. They looked great!
 
#14 ·
@Shaun, is the distance between the upper and lower ball joints the same measurement with the new spindles compared to the OE?
 
#19 ·
Leading edge caliper mounting brackets are finished. These allow you to mount our 13" and 14" front brake systems to the front edge of the spindle. These are required if using our 2" Drop Spindles and one of our 13/14" brake systems. You can also use these if packaging requires it on regular DRUM spindles.

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#23 ·
These new brackets move the caliper on our 13/14" brake systems from the rear (behind the spindle upright, or 'trailing') to the front (forward of the the spindle upright - leading). This caliper position is needed when using our 2" Drop Spindle and our deep hat offset brake systems.
 
#24 ·
Just to be clear Shaun, the flange and the bolt pattern on your spindles are set up like the original 65-66 drum/disc spindles? AKA drum spindles. I get the need to reverse the calipers in some applications because of space limitations.
 
#27 ·
I got that you're going to need 17" plus to clear the steering arms from the first posts if you want to go inboard of the UCA and and steering arm using SoT components. His name is Shaun, not Merlin!
 
#28 ·
Heh, I can always hope. I asked because most people either run 15s or 17s, very few run 16s and from the picture it looks like there is still a small amount of room up for grabs that might translate into some 16s possibly fitting....I was just looking at the tie rods though, forgot all about the control arms. Regardless though, these are now on my eventual buy list.
 
#31 ·
I haven't even been able to get the 3-link installed yet! Why do you torment me so?
 
#33 ·
Ran the '66 road race test car at Road America last weekend. 275/35/18 Hoosier R7's on all 4 corners:

801310


Very happy with how the spindle geometry uses the tire. The regular height spindle would always use the outboard half of the tire WAY more than the inboard, no matter what static negative camber we used. This would lead to roasting the outboard edge, turning it blue from heat! We'd have to get lucky to catch the wear in time to flip the tire on the rim and hopefully prolong the tire life. This means much less contact patch on the ground when using it and we wasted life in many tires by burning off the outboard edge before we could flip them.

The new spindles used all 10" of the Hoosier contact patch with -3 degrees of camber:

801312


Another interesting finding is that these new spindles are much stiffer than the old original 70-73 spindles we ran before. We'd get flexing in the old spindles through corners giving some pad knock back. I'd find I'd have to tap the brake pedal with my left foot to set the pads again on the straight before the next braking zone. With the new spindles being so stiff I experienced no knock back whatsoever. Brake pedal was in the same spot every time, even with 30mm extra rubber on each tire so more lateral grip and higher loads.

To say I'm pretty happy is an understatement!

801313
 
#35 ·
Ran the '66 road race test car at Road America last weekend. 275/35/18 Hoosier R7's on all 4 corners:

View attachment 801310

So do you have any side by side stats from before and after? Lap time reduction? Higher speed into/ out of corners? Wanting to get rid of those test mule spindles cheap?

Very happy with how the spindle geometry uses the tire. The regular height spindle would always use the outboard half of the tire WAY more than the inboard, no matter what static negative camber we used. This would lead to roasting the outboard edge, turning it blue from heat! We'd have to get lucky to catch the wear in time to flip the tire on the rim and hopefully prolong the tire life. This means much less contact patch on the ground when using it and we wasted life in many tires by burning off the outboard edge before we could flip them.

The new spindles used all 10" of the Hoosier contact patch with -3 degrees of camber:

View attachment 801312

Another interesting finding is that these new spindles are much stiffer than the old original 70-73 spindles we ran before. We'd get flexing in the old spindles through corners giving some pad knock back. I'd find I'd have to tap the brake pedal with my left foot to set the pads again on the straight before the next braking zone. With the new spindles being so stiff I experienced no knock back whatsoever. Brake pedal was in the same spot every time, even with 30mm extra rubber on each tire so more lateral grip and higher loads.

To say I'm pretty happy is an understatement!

View attachment 801313
 
#34 ·
One area I haven't seen addressed is the angle of the upper control arm with the now lower mount of the upper ball joint. It seems to me that unless the UCA mount on the chassis is lowered, the geometry would be angled worse than stock Ford before the Shelby drop was done. How was this addressed, or am I missing something?
 
#36 ·
Nothing to address here. We are using the standard Shelby drop spec. and our regular length coilover UCA's. Geometry works great, tires tell me so :cool:
 
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