Shaolin Crane

So I was given this car and to keep the story short decided to use the left over **** in my shop. After parking it and getting under it to poke around I realized the car is nearly identical in a lot of ways to the Ford Fox4 chassis. Which shouldn't actually be a surprise since both chassis debuted in 78, shared the same OE for nearly all the parts between them, and well, were owned mostly by the same company.

Since I have a PD SBF Ford I was given along with the car and the state of unknown whatever in the suspension pieces I decided to go with an 8.8 from a junkyard mustang with Maximum Motorsports parts. The chassis rails are identical to the Fox4 chassis and with some custom sub frame connectors and cuts to the mounting flanges on the panhard bar. Everything fit exactly as it does in a mustang. Articulation is the same as a mustang except with the setup I was able to utilize the factory coil overs and even used a stock mustang sway bar. Both things tht seem to be missing with other 8.8 3 link swaps.

I looked at all the other kits before I started and those determined why I wanted to try this. The others use "bench engineering" IMO which works on paper but fails in use, the biggest issues to me being the axle mounted spring perched and a pendulum mount for the front of the torque arm using the factory sheet metal.

For those that don't know Maximum Motorsports is pretty much the top tier suspension manufacturers for Mustangs and likely several hundreds of thousands of cars are running their parts.

I didn't have to cut the axle at all, or the subframe/chassis of the car. The torque arm mounted without modifications as well. The parts I did make are the subframe connectors, lower control arm mounts (that bolt to the IRS mount studs) control arms (likely could use stock mustang arms) panhard adjustment bar (only because it was missing) and custom mounts for the tubular arms that allow me to mount the swaybar without losing control arm adjustment on the car. Everything even clears the factory gas tank.

Not sure if there is any interest but I was rather excited to find how similar everything was and could use many stock parts from Mustangs and factory RX7 parts. I have 90% of everything welded and the pics are from various stages of mock up but nearly complete. I just need to find some stock springs or coil overs to finish up.

The SN axle does poke out but NRC brackets with fox length axles will fit perfectly under the car and allow you to run nearly any factory mustang wheel. I want to go wide wide body so it didn't matter but it's an option.