Thread: About to (maybe) buy my first hotrod. Please school me on 1931 Ford Coupes

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Doug, I have had no problems with several Mustang II I have used and recommend a good kit, I have seen many that look and surely drive like a nightmare. Before ever doing any suspension work or putting one together I would read all you can on either type, and try to rule out some biased opinions including mine and learn all you can. I have a old top notch book by Timothy Remus called Boyd Coddingtons How to build hot rod suspensions which is crazy priced now but really informative (out of print0, at least for me it my bible on suspensions, please note though Boyd is on the name there is nothing written by him, just his suspension guru.
The one other major problem with the MII design is not geometry but pieced together messes since so many people hack it and even use old original stuff incorectly.
I know some on here are suspension gurus but the ride quality which is pretty poor on MII cars of the 30's is do to unsprung and sprung weight. Everything suspended by springs is sprung weight, which on a early rod is quite light compared to todays luxury rides like the body, frame, motor interior etc, then everything on the otherside of the suspension is unsprung weight like spindles, rotors and brakes (shocks & springs are divided by 2 and placed in both categories). well the stock MII had pretty light unsprung weight so when you hit a bump the light weight suspenion moves up and the heavier body doesn't move much, making the suspension work. Now here is the problem, we rodders tend to er toward performance not ride, massive brakes, large rotors and calipers making the factory unsprung weight much higher, tubular a arms are used alot due to being lighter and should be stronger in cases where they are made properly, not to mention our sprung weight is much lighter than the MII also (my 32 roadster weighs 2200 lbs) so now we hit the old bump with a heavier suspension which moves the light weight mass of sprung weight ex. body & frame etc. and we move like crazy, and now this thing rides rougher than our Lexus that was mentioned. The only thing that can be worse is a hacked together incorrectly installed dropped axle so you have to decide yourself because there are options in the rod world but those are the main two, you choose something else you wll even need to do more learning snd research but both the MII and dropped axle installed correctly and sized correctly will make a good setup in my opinion. I am not a expert! but they probably make up together about 95 percent of all early rods Good luck and research!