In the pursuit of the "right" stance, a smooth ride, and improved performance, we can easily go in several directions these days. Air springs are one of the more popular options, and have been part of our hobby long enough now that most of us have either felt for ourselves or heard from others just how well they can work. When you think about it, riding little rubber pillows of air does sound pretty appealing.
Achieving the right stance using airbags is easy because the vehicle can be raised or lowered by adding or exhausting air from the system. And with the proper air spring properly installed, ride quality can be fine tuned for comfort and performance. Yes, you heard right, performance. For the past two years, Air Ride Technologies has held a track event to demonstrate with hands-on opportunities that airbags can handle with supreme performance on a road racecourse. Every magazine editor who attended was given more than enough chance, in more than a few different types of vehicles, to push air-sprung cars to the test. We were all very surprised and pleased with the experience, as well as the unprecedented opportunity to beat the heck out of some really nice rides just to prove a point.
While airbags or ShockWaves (which combine an air spring and shock in one unit) can be a good addition to many vehicles, it won't do you any good to just bolt an Air Ride Technologies kit into your car without first making sure the ball joints, control arm bushings, tie-rod ends, and so on are in tip top shape. In an old project like our '66 Ford Ranchero, that will often mean rebuilding and updating the existing suspension parts. Who knows how many miles our forlorn project had logged; just by visually inspecting the ball joints, it was evident that we would be rebuilding the entire frontend. The Ranchero's suspension parts are basically the same as the early Mustang and Falcon cars, but that didn't seem to help when we first went looking for all of the individual suspension pieces. Then we contacted Rare Parts Inc. One phone call, combined with a few minutes of looking around the company Web site, and we were able to get every part we needed, including a cool little kit to do away with the clumsy original power-assist steering contraption.
There was just one area left to address on our Ranchero's frontend: the brakes. What good are a fast engine, adjustable suspension, and tight handling if you can't properly stop the car? Surprisingly, finding a disc brake kit for our Ranchero was a bit of a challenge, too. One choice was to scour the local junkyards in hopes of finding a Granada with a complete set of front brakes. Instead, we got on the phone with Classic Performance Products. Known for putting together disc brake, steering, and suspension kits for vintage Chevy products and Ford trucks, CPP has recently started branching out to other cars like our early Falcon/Ranchero. The supplied kit was a bolt-on setup that utilized the car's original spindles. We even used most of our original brake lines, only needing to add a proportioning valve for the rear drum brakes, and one additional brake line from the passenger side of the engine compartment to the new dual-pot master cylinder.
Finally, we took the time to carefully install the rebuild pieces, ShockWave kit, and disc brake kit. This was done at home using common tools. There was no need to press anything, or go to any type of specialty shop for help. By the way, we are planning on running a set of 17-inch Cragar SS wheels. At the time of this install, however, we only had an old set of 14-inch Americans. We were very curious to see if they would work with the new disc brakes--keep reading to find out.
