Recentering a rearend?

[BarnStang]

I would be curious to know what they thought they would check. THere are frame measurements in the Ford shop manual, but a car that old should not be listed in their system. We just took a 67 Fairlane up to the frame shop. THey told us straight up they could only eyeball it and take some basic measurements. THere were no "books" that listed diminsions for the car. I would be surprised if they had 66 Mustang in their database.

 

[6T6coupe]

These cars went together with some pretty sloppy tolerances. My coupe has never been hit or bent and is over 1/4" off in some dimensions left to right. Anyone who has ever installed an export brace or Monte Carlo bar on more than one Mustang can probably attest to the differences in dimensions between any two examples.

Common hot-rod trick is if the rear end is only 1/2" off, the easiest way to move it over is to redrill the pilot holes in the bottom of the perches. You need to ensure that doing that won't make the car "crab" by ensuring that the front are rear wheels are parallel. You can even fine tune left-right wheelbases by shifting that hole front-to-rear if you find those are off.

 

[69 Rustang]

THere are frame measurements in the Ford shop manual, but a car that old should not be listed in their system.

That is about all there is--the dimensions are very simple 2D length/width dimensions. I don't even remember their being any height measures. Modern collision shops have computerized measuring systems measuring in 3 dimensions using upper tower, A pillar, B pillar, etc points for measuring within a millimeter. Of the hundreds of collision repair shops I have been in, not even one of them has the early Mustang dimensions electronically. Only a handful have access to the shop manual dimensions (just the guys who are pack-rats and don't throw anything away).

When I was trying to buy a repair shop myself a plan was to buy a Celette brand frame bench and create custom fixtures for early Mustangs so they could be repaired with high accuracy. Then again, the market for that would be very small and I would need to buy a car that hadn't been wrecked (which I never seem to do ). So I still have a day job...

 

[chromedog]

the genesis laser alignment system can take measurements from a vehicle, and generate its own set of specs. the computer triangulates all the points you have targets hanging from, and will then display the out of tolerence areas on the screen. you can also save a set of specs from any vehicle you measure. you just have to note which points were used for reference.