Flying Monkey Bus - ‘67 Falcon Wagon Content

Most of the recent work on the station wagon has been items that I’ve been needing to address, but not exactly fun. But like all maintenance tasks, there is a lot of satisfaction in knowing they are done. So now as my reward I get to do something fun for a change: get me some new wheels and tires!

This started, as so many things do in my life, with some Jerry-rigging. In this case I wanted to determine my wheels and tire size as far in advance as possible, so there would be no surprises. To do that I wanted to be able to move my suspension through it’s full range of motion, so I built this tool why not.

And since it’s made of all-thread, I have the ability to set the suspension at ride height (while the car itself is in the air) or at any height I wish. All I have to do is turn a wrench:

I’m planning on ordering shocks at some point, so it’s already been helpful to verify travel and min/max heigh for shocks. Also it has helped me to work out some critical dimensions using this other tool I Jerry-rigged:

I already have a good idea of the wheel and tire size I want to run, so this tool allows me to check clearance with some confidence before I open my wallet. It’s looking like the wheel will clear the ball joint and fender at ride height, so we’re off to a good start!

A few turns of the wrench and I’m at full compression and against the bump stop. Already I can see the tire will contact the area above the bump stop, and turning the wheel to full lock (not pictured) there are a few spots on the fender that need some massaging as well.

Overall I’ll be a tight fit, but I have it on good authority that 255 tires will fit, so I’m sure the 245’s I’m considering will work out fine. I’m still measuring and figuring out the final tire fitment but for now it’s clear that my intended wheel size will be fine. To be safe, I ordered one wheel so I could get a quick go/no-go check on fit. As soon as it arrived I had this bolted up, and they fit with no issues. \o/

Yep, no shiny mag rims for me! I’m going to keep it old-school and stick with steel wheels for this project, in this case 16×8” wheels with a 4.5” backspace. For those of you possibly shaking your heads, I’ll say that I’m not really a fan of 17” wheels (they always seem out of proportion to me) and I think old cars look better with a bit of sidewall so this will let me run a taller tire.

The good new at least is that you can still find a few decent performing tires in 16” sizes, so I’m hoping this will help me keep things looking stealth, while allowing the car handle decently and let me surprise a few people. I’ve ordered 3 more wheels to round out the set, so more to come…

I love the wheel/tire fitment tool. What a great idea. 

Looks great Jerry!   As always well done man.  
 

I know you mentioned you checked clearance while turning but did you verify while also under compression?  This was where my clearance issues up front showed up-full lock and in bump.  The adjustable strut rods allowed me to push the wheel/tire back and closer to CL of the wheel well and that got me the clearance I needed. 

wawazat said:

Looks great Jerry!   As always well done man.  
 

I know you mentioned you checked clearance while turning but did you verify while also under compression?  This was where my clearance issues up front showed up-full lock and in bump.  The adjustable strut rods allowed me to push the wheel/tire back and closer to CL of the wheel well and that got me the clearance I needed. 

Thanks for the encouragement Todd!

Like you, all my problems are while under compression @ full lock, so yes I’m definitely checking that.  On the shock tower side of things there is a bit of rubbing due to camber gain, but most of my work will be on the fender.  I also have some latitude on centering the wheel by tweaking caster, but I think rolling my fender lip and maybe pulling the fender out a bit will get me in the clear.

With Mustang being Falcon based I assume your car has strut rods too.  Is that so?  I can heartily recommend the Street or Track products and I believe Shaun offers them for Falcons IIRC.   On my car they offered a HUGE range of adjustment.  May be easier and cheaper than body mods on that beautiful wagon.  

Interestingly I hit up Opentracker for this more budget-oriented solution that works with my existing strut rods, but should offer a similar improvement by eliminating the rubber bushings:

DELRIN MONOBALL STRUT ROD BUSHING SET (1966-1970) FALCON-COMET-

I’d love to invest in Shaun’s setup and maybe I will when the time is right.  For now I’m trying to improve the factory setup as much as possible so I can spend my money elsewhere. 

As for fitment, most of my issues are at the front of the wheel arch, which is a common problem for Mustangs and Falcons alike when you try to run a lot of caster.  Most people get around that by upgrading to fabricated upper arms with caster already dialed in, so it’s not all set via the strut rod pulling  the wheel forward.

My budget solution will be to go old-school and use alignment shims on the front half of the UCA mount to set the upper ball joint back a bit.  Then I can dial some of the adjustment out of the lower strut rod, and have some latitude in centering the wheel in the arch while still be able to run plenty of caster.

Time will tell if this works for me...

As I alluded to in my last post, I really want to run wide tires in the front of my wagon, but was already running into issues. Predictably, things seem to fit just fine as long as the wheel was pointed straight ahead, but as soon as suspension compression and steering are brought into the picture I was making contact in several places.

Of course I knew I’d need to massage the wheel wells to some extent, but I’ve never really seen a good guide on how to go about this as minimally as possible. In a past life, I’d probably just order some fat tires, stuff them in there, and figure it out as I go. But for some reason, with this project it’s all about taking my time, and understanding as much as I can before I get medieval on it.

Basically I wanted to measure and quantify where I’m making contact, and see if I can minimize that as much as possible before clearancing. So that’s where my DIY fitment tool comes in. To be as precise as possible I fired up the internet and collected measurements for a few sizes I wanted to run with. Then I fired up the CAD and came up with this cardboard template that clips into the tool.

From here I decided to approach fitment as systematically as possible, raising my suspension (from ride height) a half inch at a time until I hit the bump stop, turning the steering back and forth at each point and marking down where I am making contact. Luckily the tool I made to replace my shock/spring made this really easy. Since it’s made out of 3/8-16 all-thread, four turns of the wrench is exactly 1/4”, which translates to 1/2” of travel at the wheel.

Basically at every lift point I would turn the steering, check where I was hitting the arch in one direction, spin the tool in the other direction and mark that, then turn the wheel a bit more and do it again, adding marks until I had moved the steering to full lock in both directions. In the end I would have a series of marks that I would then fill in, since any point in-between would also be a point of contact. Here I am marking off some contact I’m getting about 1/2″ from hitting the bump stop. You can see where I have filled in the areas for 1.5″ (blue squiggles) and 1″(green squiggles) from full bump as well.

Naturally with the suspension up against the stops is where you get the most interference, so I marked those in black so they would stand out. At the end of all this, you can look up into the wheel well, and see where the worst of the contact is. For the most part, the black marker covers all the other marks I made, except at the top of the arch where camber gain lets the tire clear the arch at the top, but the shoulder of the tire makes contact 1” from bump.

The other point of contact I have is the inner wheel well, a sheet metal plate the covers the spring pocket and provides a place to mount the bump stop. I’m only getting contact here at 1/2” from full bump (and at full bump of course) and for these marks I also noted the approximate height of the tire. I’m less worried about this area since I can work it with a BFH, but I’d still like to minimize contact as much as possible.

So, what have I learned here? One thing that is clear is that almost all of the contact I’m having is at the front of the wheel arch, which indicates a caster issue. With late 60’s Ford intermediates (Mustang, Falcon, Fairlane, Cougar, etc.) caster is set by adjusting the length of the strut rod attached to the lower control arm. At most the factory ran 1.5° positive caster and it’s been a while since I did my last alignment, but I’m somewhere around 3-4° If I remember correctly, so the wheel is pulled forward a bit as the interference marks show.

My solution is to use alignment shims to add caster to the upper control arm instead, which will help move the top of the wheel back so I can dial out some of the strut rod adjustment. With any luck I’ll be able to split the difference with the caster adjustment, allowing me to pull the wheel back somewhat. This will let me to shift the contact points rearward where there is far more room due to the shape of the arch. 

The goal here (other than make a big tire fit) is to run as much caster as feasible, while minimizing how much I need to roll and pull the fenders and maintain as much of the stock body lines as possible. I’ve got alignment shims on order, so next we add caster at the top, do a quick alignment with the car in the air, and check clearance again. I’m starting to feel a lot better about making 245s fit without too much surgery. \m/

It became pretty clear that to fit larger tires on the wagon in the most minimally invasive way possible, I was going to need to find a way to move the upper control arm back in the wheel well. Since this meant adding caster (something the internets tell me is a good thing) I was game to give it a try. With stock arms the way to do this is to add shims to the front of the UCA, but I ran into a lot of conflicting advice on how many shims to add, what the change in caster and camber would be, how far it would move the wheel back, etc.

So like any good nerd, I thought this would be a good chance for me to use some science to figure it all for myself. In the process I thought it’d be a nice way to get a better understanding of caster, which I kinda knew the theory on, but ultimately had a poor grasp of. First things first, I had to come up with a way to measure caster with my car in the air, so I jerry-rigged this:

Basically I’m using a laser level that is flipped upside down and stuck to the rotor with magnets, and a scrap of cardboard with lines at 0° and 20° on either side of that. Add to that a digital angle finder cube to measure camber and I had everything I needed to measure caster. I’m sure this is not entirely accurate compared to reading everything on a turn plates with the weight of the car on the suspension, but I figured the it’d still get me in the ballpark.

From here it was time to set a baseline so I measured the car as it sat, with a home alignment I did many years prior but never wrote down the settings I used. So I dutifully turned the wheels one way then the other, measuring camber at each point and applying the maths to determine caster. Since I also wanted to understand the way caster affects camber gain on turn in, I measured everything at ride height and again at 1/2” from full bump. What I ended up with is this

Some interesting things jumped out to me. The first is that I had far less caster than I’d thought. In my dim memory I was pretty sure I added about 2° positive caster last time I aligned the wagon, I seemed to have just a half degree of caster as it sat. Another thing that jumped out is that I actually was losing negative camber on turn in (compared to camber with the wheels straight) which I’m pretty sure is the opposite of what you want.

I was also pretty surprised to see that I had 3.5° camber gain between ride height and full bump, which was more than I would have guessed for a 60’s car. It also shows that the “Shelby drop” of the UCA is quite effective. One last thing that surprised me was the measurable amount of toe out I had at full bump. You can see here there is quite a difference between the laser line at ride height (lined up with the 0° mark)

And here again at full bump, showing some pretty serious toe out. This plus the lack of caster probably explains why the wagon feels so twitchy as the suspension would cycle.

I’ve always known I had a bump steer issue since I lowered my car, but to see it so graphically was something else. Luckily I have a bump steer correction kit I plan to add to help address this. I also have an idea that I can use the laser to measure and dial that in too.

More to come…

Once I had set a baseline it was time for some shims. I loosened up the upper control arm bolts and slipped in three 1/16” (0.17”) onto the front UCA stud and tightened everything down.

This shim pack represents about the max you can get away with on a stock 1967 Falcon/Mustang control arm. You can see here on the backside where the arm bolts in, I’m lacking complete thread engagement but there is a pretty thick lock washer that can be taken out of the mix to get full engagement back.

anyway, it was good enough for now, so I measured again for caster as well as camber gain at bump. Here’s what I came out with.

First I could see that the three shims added about 2° of positive caster since they move the ball joint back, but the shims also move it outward a bit too, so I lost a little negative camber which I was fine with. I was also glad to see I gained negative camber on turn in. This lines up with the theory of how caster affects camber, but it was nonetheless cool to see the measurements bear it out.

However, as encouraging as this was it did not seem to move my wheel back in the wheel well enough to help with tire clearance though, so I jammed in three more alignment shims (for a total of 6) to see how far I could push it. At this point I’m totally outside what is possible with the stock UCA. Even with the lock washer removed, the nut is barely hanging on to the forward mounting stud (left) compared to the rear sud, which has full thread engagement as it should.

Clearly not advised to run this on the street but plenty good enough for me to measure camber and caster. Here’s the results with six 1/16” (.34”) shims in the forward location.

Even though I’m way outside what is possible with a factory UCA it was nice to see I could get almost 5° of positive caster just from adjusting the upper arm. I’m thinking this is near the limit of what I will run for caster on my car, but it’s awesome to see how much camber gain I could get on turn in if I wanted to push it this far. Also it was pretty clear to I’d moved the wheel further back as a result, which is exactly what I’m after. For example the ball joint used to be centered on the bump stop but is now almost falling off the back side.

At this point I figured I could move the wheel back even farther by adjusting the lower strut rod to lengthen it.

This pushes the lower control arm rearward, which also dials out a bit of positive caster as well. I chose at random to make the strut 1/4” longer, left the shims in the UCA, and measured again.

To me this is the happy medium. Since I plan to make this primarily a street car, I don’t want to run much more that a 1/2° of negative camber to maximize tire life, but the added dynamic camber should help with grip in turns. Overall I’m hopping this will work well as a starting point. Also I managed to move the wheel back almost 1” after all was said and done.

I also bolted my DIY fitment gauge back in place to check if 245 tires will fit and things are looking a lot better. It’s may be hard to make out in this picture but the tire is should no longer be hitting the front of the wheel arch, and is instead contact in the middle and toward the back.

Because the middle and rearward part of the arch has a natural flare to the body line, most of this area will need nothing more than to have the fender flange rolled flat. I will need to pull and stretch the top of the arch a bit to create some space but otherwise it’s looking good under here. I’ll wait for tires and some moderate fender rolling before I work that out though.

Another sign of how far back I’ve managed to move the wheel is the contact I’m making here at the back of the wheel well.

I’m not sure what exactly this protuberance is for exactly, but it seems to be a panel the joins the fender and the inner structure, but it’s hard to make out since it’s all covered in the rubberized schutz Ford seemed to cover everything in. No matter, some massaging with a hammer will take care of this.

There is one last thing to address though, and that’s the upper control arm. I reasoned that I could probably add a longer stud to allow me to bolt the factory UCA in and still run the amount of shims I needed, but the angle the arm was at still felt pretty severe. With my luck it’d bend the shaft the control arm rides on or introduce some bind or other weirdness in the stock bushings. So I realized it was time to level up…

It became pretty obvious that adding caster at the UCA was going to be key in running the tires I wanted, so I decided tubular arms would help me to fix a bunch of problems. These are Street or Track tubular upper arms, and they’re stronger in every way compared to the stock UCAs. I wasn’t ready for (or planning to fund) the full conversion to a coilover suspension so these work great with my stock spring saddles, but crucially they’re very adjustable so I can dial in caster at the front rod end. I believe these are also a bit shorter than stock arms so they’ll have a more camber gain too.

Also they look awesome! Can’t wait to bolt them up

Woo Hoo!   I like those Jerry!  

Now that I’ve moved the wheels back in the wheel wells, it’s helped a lot with space for bigger tires, but that alone was not going to be enough. It was time to get into moving sheet metal to make up the rest.

So thanks to Amazon this implement arrived. To be honest I would of purchased the real deal from Eastwood but the shipping to Hawaii adds a lot to cost, so the cheap import won out. Here it is getting ready to take a bite out of my fenders.

After a few passes it was becoming clear that it have a hard time folding the fender lip back due to how thick the flange is. Ford was not shy about using heavy gauge steel in the 60’s, and at best I could only half-fold them over. So first victim here was the flange itself, which went on a diet thanks to my cutoff wheel.

You can see at the top of the photo the flange is thinner at the top of the arch. Toward the bottom of the wheel well I’m retaining as much of the flange as possible. The goal here is to somehow find a way to retain the factory stainless steel wheel trim. I’m a sucker for gingerbread like that; it’s what makes old cars so cool in my mind. But I may be asking a lot here so we’ll see if I get to keep them or list them on eBay.

Anyway, with some massaging from the crappy wheel arch tool, and some persuasion with a hammer and dolly, the wheel well flange was starting to fold over nicely.

It’s not all life in paradise though. I got a little hasty trying to help the wheel lip folded over, and forgot to worry about collateral damage. So I kinda did this with a pair of pliers, which I’m not proud of.

Luckily most of this came out with a hammer and dolly, but the paint is messed up for sure. No big deal, this car ain’t about being pretty and an expensive paint job is at the very bottom of the list in this project so for now it adds “character” to the build.

Another war wound I was not expecting is the steel to crack and split as is was getting more aggressive at pulling the flare out. So toward the back of the wheel well I got this lovely surprise where the flange decided to split from the fender rather than roll over.  :facepalm:

I’m guessing I’ll need to stitch this up with the welder, but since I’m trying to find a way to retain the stainless trim I’m not too worried about this showing. Either way I’m bummed to have to deal with it, and not sure why the steel here decided to fail. Probably a result of me not going slow enough (even though I thought I was being careful) so we’ll leave this “learning experience” as a demerit on my permanent record.

Also one final war wound, this adjustment knob on my crappy import wheel clearance tool decided to give up the ghost…

You can see at the top of the photo that it’s just a nut with a few crappy tack welds (no prep, no penetration) which was also a bummer. Anyway I’m able to work around it for now, so all I can say is you get what you pay for.

And the rest of the wheels showed up. Here I am loading them up for a trip to my local Costco, hoping to persuade the tire center manager that not all classic cars are death traps or an insurance risk. Alas I was rebuffed, and came home empty-handed. 

As I’m learning, Hawaii has no love of mainland business at times, so short of Costco there’s not many options for interesting tires of the 16” variety. I had to stew in this for a bit, but I was happy to discover that Tire Rack, patron saint of tires in all sizes, can ship to my local Firestone and they just charge a bit extra to install! So just like that we’re back in business; the big meatballs are on the way and they’re going on the car soon.  I’ll do final fitment of the fender when I have the actual wheels and tires, so there’s more to come…

As easy as people make rolling fenders look it just really isn't. Most cars have thin metal for front fenders but the rears are very solid. I usually use a 2# finger getter to start the bend then move on to an assortment of rollers to get the curve I want. I have one of the ancient harbor freight rollers, an Eastwood roller and a powered by max roller and they all are good for something different. Your car is coming along nicely, bet you can't wait to have it back on four tires

Thanks for the props!  Yep for sure it's not a perfect tool; I've been able to make it work sorta, but only because I can easily adjust the height of the suspension to get the roller exactly where I want it. 

Maybe on a newer model car with thinner sheet metal and a wheel well that is more perfectly round I could see it working better, but with this old steel it's just not as persuasive as it could be I guess.  Also you're right, can't wait to get this thing back on the ground!

While this won't help you now, back in the day (lol),  on the A2 Golf/Jetta 16 valve models the front fender actually had a cut out on the fender lip on the inside edge to clear the bigger tire/wheel on the GLi/GTi

Sounds like I did something similar (trim the fender lip) but then I kept going.  I'm still not all the way there TBH, but waiting to get my tires mounted before I pull (flare?) the fender out the rest of the way.  

OK finally we get to the update I’ve been waiting for. All the measuring and head scratching was necessary but not exactly fun. Now we get to the fun part; I got tires mounted and I’m ready to bolt these suckers up to see how they fit!

I did not have a lot to choose from in the 245/50r16 size, but in the end I opted for General G-Max RS tires from Tire Rack. I could have gone down a size to 225 and had more selection but I think I’ll be pretty happy with these in the end. No denying thought that in the flesh these are some meaty wheels and tires, especially compared to the puny 14” tires I’ve been running to date.

Going with steel wheels is possibly a polarizing choice (and wow are they heavy!) but I really like how stealthy and old school these are. Appearance-wise these look a lot like the wheels they’re replacing; not exactly the same as period pieces but with nicer proportions and obviously much (!) better tires.

Anyway, let’s get these on the car! The wagon is still on jack stands so there’s still more work to do, but here they are with the suspension set to ride height. I’m really digging this…

Fitment at the back was no sweat, they are fine without moving any sheet metal. If anything I may add a 1/4” spacer to move the wheels outward a bit. Where the fit is much more crucial (as the previous posts will attest) is all at the front. The good news is that all the prep work to create clearance seems to have paid off; wheels pointed straight I’ve got plenty of room.

Running the suspension through it’s full range of motion was also drama-free. I was expecting to have to tweak the fender more, but even at full bump I’ve got plenty of room. My only contact is at the very top of the wheel well with steering turned out at full lock. 

Truthfully I’ll probably never have this issue during normal driving but I can’t leave this be so I plan on pulling the top of the fender a bit more. I hate (hate!) the sound of wheels rubbing fenders, and I’m a sucker for cars with heaps of suspension travel. Looks like I’m going to be able to have my cake and eat it too!

I’m not quite there yet, since I need to install the new upper control arms and finalize camber/caster, as well as clearance the driver side fender same as I’ve done on this side. Also I still need to paint these wheels, so the primer finish is just temporary. But damn, I can’t wait to get the wagon back on the ground so I can go for a drive!

Mmmmmmm!  Meaty!  Looks great Jerry!  

What color are you planning to paint the wheels?

Something low key I’m sure.  I’m leaning toward the same gunmetal grey the 14” rims were painted, but I may try them out in black for a bit to see if I like it.  

Also no plans for hub caps in the near future, I like my steel rims with the lug nuts exposed!

Whelp, as gratifying as it was to get a look at the new wheels and tires on the wagon, there’s still work to be done to creat just a bit more room for them. First up is more wheel arch clearance. 

As it stands, I’m only making contact when at full bump, and even then only with the steering turned as far as it’ll go. In the previous post I showed where I get contact at the front of the arch (turning right) but I also have a spot to deal with at the back of the arch (turning left) which you can see here.

At this point I decided to skip on using the crappy fender roller tool, which is OK-ish for roughing in the clearance but too imprecise at this stage. After some trial and error I found that using a body hammer as a pry tool did a good job of letting me pull the fender with some precision. As long as I placed the tip of the hammer behind the (now flattened) fender flange and stayed out close to the edge of the arch it pulled the fender smoothly and with no kinking or sheet metal damage.

I also found that one of the dollies in my cheap Harbor Freight set did a nice job of resting against the sidewall of the tire. This allowed me to raise the suspension until the dolly was putting upward pressure on the fender to “push” rather than pull it out. I was actually able to generate a good bit of force this way just by tightening the all-thread holding the suspension in place. Sometimes I’d just use this by itself and other times in combination with a body hammer (as pictured here) to planish the sheet metal and help it stretch a bit.

I’m a novice when it comes to body work but this ended up being a pretty precise way to shape the arch, especially compared to the wheel arch roller I’d procured. Working in this way I was able to pull the arch just enough to get the clearance I needed in exactly the spots I needed it. Pictured here the suspension is hard against the bump stop with steering at full lock and I’ve got just enough clearance. The split in the sheet metal still needs to be welded up, but I wanted to wait until the fender was fully stretched and formed since the harder weld material will make this arch more difficult to shape after welding.

The picture is a little hard to make out, but I had some extra 1/16” alignment shims handy as a guide and I have just about 1/8” of clearance now. This ought to be plenty of room since it’s in a place I’ll never rub except maybe in a parking lot or taking a ramp at some weird angle… but now I have some peace of mind that it won’t happen if I end up in that kind of situation. Nothing worse that the sound of rubbing sheet metal when pulling in to the local cars & coffee!

Now that I was all set at the back of the arch, I turned the wheel hard in the other direction and pulled out the front of the arch using the same approach. Again here I am with 1/8″ of clearance in a place I hope I’ll never come close to making contact anyway.

I will say that as well as this “made it up myself” fender pulling technique worked out in the end, it was a brutal way to make these tires fit. I got it done, but there were definitely some scars from how medieval things got at times. Here’s some of the cringe-worthy evidence of chipping paint, in addition to the wrinkling of panels and other defects (shown in the other pictures in this post) that I’ve had planish out with hammer and dolly.

My heart goes out to anyone trying to pull their fenders whilst trying to keep their perfect paint intact. I’m sure some of my troubles come from how stout this old sheet metal was, but the paint on the wagon is far from perfect and has some rust issues elsewhere I need to address so it’s not like it will stay pristine anyway, but more like a well preserved work truck. I bet if you’re doing this on your shiny new car there are a lot of tears to go along with that chipped paint though.

Luckily I do also have a trick up my sleeve to hide some of the damage here, and that is to try to retain the stainless wheel arch trim that came with the wagon. Falcons of this period were not exactly a luxury vehicle, and that goes double for the station wagon. So I find it odd (and kinda cool) that whoever bought this car back in 1967 checked the “Futura” box in the options list, so it has all kinds of trim and gingerbread you would not find on a typical base model wagon. I really want to honor that history and retain what I can even after mods.

Here I’m holding the trim in place to check fit and see how much the shape of the fender has changed.

It fits good from the back but you can see that the trim is no longer touching in the front, which shows how much the arch has been pulled out from the original shape. My guess is that I pulled the top of the arch out (from the original body line) about 1/2″ – 3/4″ or so. It’s a pretty subtle change with the trim in place, which keeps it stealthy and given how much work went into making the tires fit is a definite win in my book. \o/

Shown here with some tek screws to hold it in place for mockup, it actually looks like I can close that gap by shaping the trim a bit which is a happy outcome! Also it looks like the trim will cover the worst of the chipped paint at the edge of the arch, as well as the area where the sheet metal cracked and eventually welded up. You can still tell the arch has “been through some stuff” but it’s much nicer looking compared to if the trim was not there, and does not call too much attention to itself.

This is just mockup of course, so I still need to remove some of the mounting flange from the trim (near the top) to clear the tire at full bump, and then find a way to mount it at the top of the arch since there is no actual fender flange there to screw into. All of this seems pretty easy to surmount though, so the punch list is slowly growing shorter at last. All I have left to do is clearance the driver side fender same as the passenger side, bolt on the new upper control arms, set alignment, and the (hopefully) give it some gas!

I love this car. Those wheels look just right.

Any time that I catch myself saying “I’m almost ready to wrap this up” I know that’s a half-truth at best. Technically speaking it’s a fact that I’ve checked more things off the list than things I have remaining, but the truth is that there’s plenty more work to be done.

However, this has been a busy few weeks, so the wagon has been on hiatus. I did get the chance though to get over one more hurdle by getting my stainless wheel trim fitted. Going in I was kind of dreading this, since I’m always afraid I’m going to screw it up royally. I’ve only got one of these (per side) and it’s not the kind of thing you can buy in a catalog, so there is not much room for failure.

Anyway, I decided to grab a hammer and figrue it out as I went. First I mocked the trim up so it was held in place on the fender, then I took a marker and approximated the width of the fender lip. Then I started rolling the flange with my body hammer, focusing on the top of the arch where the fit was tightest

The stainless is pretty thin gauge so it was easy to work, so I kept slowly working the trim, using the wheel arch as a dolly. Periodically I’d bolt on the wheel and check fit. I’m part way there in this picture, and the trim is folded pretty tightly at the top of the arch, but the sides need to be folded in a bit more.

After a bit more hammering I had the trim worked out, other than this spot at full bump turning hard to the right.

Also had the same issue at full bump with the wheel turned the other way. I had clearance here before the trim, but that space went away pretty quickly. No worries though, with a combination of wailing on it with my hammer and some judicious pulling of the fender lip I had the clearance I needed back.

It was rough in a few spots but this is all pretty much out of sight unless you’re on you back or the car is on a lift. Still though I went the extra mile and covered my sins (and the mounting screws) in satin black paint.

And this is how things are looking on the inside with the trim folded over. The fit here is tight enough the it’s held in place by tension and the lower mounting screws.

One last order of business is this bit of protruding bodywork inside the rear wheel well.

This was by far the easiest bit of clearance I had to create, since it involved nothing more than some persuasion with a sledge hammer.

All set here, just need to hit it with some paint.

And as a finishing touch I added the original mud flaps back on.

All I gotta do now is repeat all of this on the other side. It took a lot of work to get to this point but at least now I have a plan of attack for the driver’s side, so it should go faster and hopefully involve fewer mis-steps and chipped paint.

Now that the wheel arch is all worked out, it’s time to start bolting on some new suspension parts, starting with the upper control arm. As usual, this starts with breaking a few eggs…

And then out with the greasy stuff to make way for the new stuff.

And finally the shiny new UCA goes in.

These arms come with 3° of positive caster built in (compared to stock) due to one heim joint being threaded out farther than the other. But I decided to add a few alignment shims anyway to see if I can get away with even more.

But when I bolted on my wheels to run the suspension through it’s motions I could see this was going to be less easy than I thought. Turns out this UCA is actually longer than the stock piece. Essentially it pushed the tire into positive camber, and ate up all the clearance I had made for tires.

I didn’t take a picture, because positive camber makes me cry.

However, you can see the difference in length pretty easily on the bench. Here the ball joints are in line, and the bolts for the aftermarket arm are just a bit longer, about 1/2” on the “long side” of the arm. Adding alignment shims only made matters worse.

Luckily the arms are very adjustable, so instead of adding shims to the long side to get more camber, I could just thread in the short side a bit more, which also makes the arm a bit shorter.

And with the crossbar installed, you can really see how asymmetrical the UCA is getting.

Aaaand just like that the UCA is back in, complete with an overwhelming sense of deja vu since I only just did this an hour earlier.

With everything bolted back up I did a quick check of camber and caster with my digital angle finder and laser level.

With a little adjustment on the lower control arm I was able to get 4° positive caster, and just enough clearance (again!) for my wheel/tire package. Also even though I have 0° of camber at ride height, the caster adds a good amount of camber gain at turn in, just where I’ll need it.

And with that issue finally resolved it was time for a few more shiny parts, starting with the lockout plates that replace the eccentric cam bolt that used to set camber. The stock bolts slip even in spirited driving on the street (ask me how I know) so I’ll never have to worry about losing my camber settings again.

And last on the list for today was the bushing for the strut rod that locates the lower control arm.

These are just huge hunks of rubber that may be great for NVH issues, but they cause real problems with the drivability of the wagon since the deflect so easily and lead to weird/scary changes in caster as you drive. Don’t take my word for it though, this video does a good job of showing the issue.

Granted I think the person that recorded this looks to have installed these incorrectly (retaining plate is reversed, and insufficient pre-load) but you get the idea. Even if mine is not as bad, you can feel the suspension moving around as you drive, and it contributes to some horrific bump steer. They have to go!

Rather than sink money into a pair of fabricated arms with rod ends, I decided to give these replacement Delrin “monoball” bushings from Opentracker a try. They’re shaped like a big ball and socket joint so they should articulate freely and take out the play you get with the rubber bushings.

And here they are mounted in the car. 

The other thing I like about going this route is that the strut rod retains the stock length. Adding a heim joint makes the strut rod a few inches shorter, which is fine if you don’t have a lot of suspension travel, but I plan to retain as much travel as possible. A longer strut rod will keep the caster changes to a minimum, all other things being equal. And they’re cheaper, which means I can buy other stuff with the extra money. More to come…

For as long as I’ve had this wagon, bump steer has been a constant problem. When it was on stock suspension this was harder to notice since everything was terrible, but every improvement I’ve made since then (especially lowering it) has only served to bring it into sharper relief. As it sits I’m actually pretty fearful about driving around at anything higher than “cruising speeds” since hitting bumps and road undulations at speed made the car feel like it wanted to jump into the other lane. Unnerving to say the least.

On this round of improvements I’ve sought to address bump steer in a few ways already. The first is with added caster, which doesn’t affect bump steer directly but definitely helps with feel/confidence due to the self centering steering effect. Removing the stock rubber bushings in the lower strut rods will also help since they contribute a lot of bump steer as the deflect. But there’s still one more improvement I’d like to make and that is to change the length of the tie rods themselves. To help me with that is this lovely bump steer kit from Baer.

Most of the time I’ve seen this kind of kit installed, it’s just with some guesstimated number of spacers. It seems like nobody wants (or knows how) to take the time to measure this. But I figured that since I have my suspension apart this would be a great way to deploy some science and create a bump steer graph of my very own. 

On the internet there is not really a ton of info on how to DIY this kind of measurement, but I’d noticed when checking camber on the wagon that it I leave my laser level stuck to the rotor, the amount of deflection I had at full bump was easily visible. So I hatched a plan. First step, stick the laser level to the brake rotor.

Then I stuck a piece of cardboard on a nearby wall like so.

It doesn’t show in the picture here but I’ve traced the crosshairs with a sharpie to denote ride height. Then I moved the suspension a 1/2” at a time, and made a new mark. When I was done cycling the suspension through bump and droop, I had something like this:

Yep, just like that I had a clean graph of my bump steer. The X axis measures steering, with toe in on the left and toe out on the right. The Y axis measures suspension movement from bump at the top to droop at the bottom. So putting that all together you can see that as the suspension compresses the toe out gets steadily worse. This definitely helps me visualize why the wagon feels so sketchy when I drive it hard. It basically wants to dart in both directions at the same time!

At droop I have the opposite issue, and it’s clear to see I’m getting quite a bit of toe in, but this is less concerning to me. The toe out though is something I’ll gladly work to get rid of. It’d be nice if this car was confidence inspiring (instead of panic inducing) when driven hard. Anyway time to add some new hardware, starting with removing this old ball joint.

And then a healthy dose of the silver schmoo. This picture was taken shortly before I became coated in silver up to my elbows. ಠ_ಠ

And then I threaded on the bump steer arm. I decided to use the full stack of shims (0.83”) just to see what it’d do with the maximum correction.

To the naked eye it does not seem to make the steering arm longer but I set up the laser and the target, and ran the suspension through the motions.

Here I am measuring somewhere near full droop.

And you can see where this is going but here is the full graph, bump steer correction is the green dots, stock is the red dots.

The improvement is pretty drastic, with barely any toe out in compression, and bit more toe in at full droop. Since this is the max you can get out of the correction kit, this test was over pretty quickly. I’m guessing smaller stacks of shims will fall between the two extremes anyway. This is a pretty good result though, and I’m hoping all these changes will add up to a more confident ride.

Now I need to duplicate all this on the other side, which I will probably do off camera so I can bang it out. Time to get these wheels on the ground!

Nice progress here in a car I like (wagons, I have a thing for them).

Bump steer measurement is a bit tricky. I have tried a number of methods and the one you use is probably the one i like best. Apart maybe from using a true bump steer gauge with dial indicators.

One thing to look out for, is if you have a king pin inclination and/or caster that means you really should compare the dots to an inclined line, instead of a vertical one.

Usually the difference is really small but it might be worth checking.

IME it is normal (and probably usually desired) to have some toe out in bump, since that way you get a bit of toe out when the car rolls onto the outer wheel. This makes the car understeer a bit as it rolls, generally I find that it feels safer than a car that oversteers as it rolls. Oversteer/understeer is maybe not the right word though, steers more or less is perhaps a better vocabulary.

Either way I have also come to the conclusion that trial and error, ie test drives, is what really is needed for fine tuning. Getting the basics right, like you have done here is a great first step.

Gustaf