I love my car. It's a 1967 Ford Falcon Futura Wagon and it has been a bit of a personal journey over the last few years for me. Every little bit of the car from the engine to the wiring has been touched in some way by my hands and while it still remains stock in most ways, I have made a few additions that better suit my tastes. I simply love the car. It is actually one of the few things that my wife and I agree upon! I can honestly say that my ole wagon has been a positive thing in my life. And like all good things, there are a few bad things that I tend to dismiss due to my love for the old long roof. The one complaint I would like to mention is the rear suspension. Most older Fords are hung on either a single or multi-leaf spring rear suspension. The system of using leaf springs has been around since well before the Conestoga wagons headed west. It is a tried and true method and has few inherent faults. they are easy to design and easy to work on should you ever need to. Parts are available for most cars and after market upgrades are relatively inexpensive. Leaf springs are not susceptible to some of the worries such as excessive rear steer and other issues connected with coil springs and four/five link suspensions. They have been used in all manner of racing including left turns, right turns and straight line speed contest racing both in the Americas and across the mother continent. In short, leaf springs are a stable and secure suspension method. My problem is that they tend to really show the age of their technological advancement at the racetrack. (Dragstrip) Axle twist, wheel hop and spring binding is always a problem in a leaf sprung cars. After market options like slapper bars and Cal links are available for those of us with the means and they do help in most cases but there has to be a better option. Or at least one that doesn't look like a junkyard country boy demolition derby add on. I recently purchased a set of Competition Engineering "Slide a link" traction devices that don't look too bad. I figured that with the new frame connectors I had installed, this was a nice looking set that was adjustable and to tell you the truth, "Just looked cool!" Installation was fairly straight forward taking the better half of a day and the instruction pamphlet was helpful with the initial adjustments. That was the easy part. My first day at the track was a wonderfully trying and exhausting day of adjusting and re-adjusting and adjusting some more, that put my other power/drivetrain additions on a level with changing my windshield wiper blades. "Holy Cow!" and Whoa! were some of the words used to describe the first runs after installing my slide a links. (There are others, but discretion precludes my mentioning them here in the gentleman's forum.) My car's 427 stroker small block engine can make upwards of 650+ bills. That and a loose torque converter (4500 stall. I usually leave around 3500) really made for a wild ride and the first launch was enough to rival the best roller coaster at six flags! Things were slow to improve too. After eleven runs on the track in Woodburn Oregon, I had still not got it right. the car leaves hard right for the most part. With my front wheels in the air for the first sixty feet or so, correcting this offsides launch was a real task! I gave up trying to adjust them and put the car back on the jack stands and reset the bars back to page one. Hard left! Adjust. Hard right! Adjust. Pretty straight. Another run and it was back to the left and right hula dance for the old Ford wagon. Frustrated, I put my misguided family cruiser back on the trailer and made straight for home, tail between my legs. I tell ya! it was enough to make me want to go buy a smart car. Now there are kits to re-suspend your old Ford with coils and four/five links, ladder bars and such, but they are not within my budgetary confines. Anyone of you out there in station wagon performance land wanna lend a hand here/ I'd really appreciate some suggestions. I called Competition Engineering for advice and got a nice guy with a nice speaking voice, telling me to just follow the installation instruction advice and keep my nose to the grindstone. I'll bet he drives a Honda Civic. These things are supposed to be state of the art automotive traction devices that work well in drag racing and I have been told they do well in circle and autocross racing as well. I paid two hundred bucks for them and I want to get my time and money's worth out of them. Give me your best guys!
on my old 61 Falcon wag...I left the stock springs in her....and built a ...for lack of better terms...a slightly triangulated ladder bar set up! (think old school ladder bars) got rid of all the hop and skip...and the hula dance.. and next time your at Woodburn...go smack Jay Livingston for me...tell him its from Rick at MRP
