Any builder will soon find the factory Mustang unibody and suspension design riddled with inherent issues when trying to bring an early pony car up to today’s standards of ride quality and comfort. There have been many attempts to fix these issues with braces and cradles and crossmembers, and connectors which all seem like one band aid fix upon another. The original antiquated steering is top of the list when it comes to parts needing to be updated. Steering rack conversions are available but offer sub-par geometry and ackerman angle with little to no improvement over factory steering.
The factory shock towers make for an extremely tight engine bay and limit suspension geometry. Bolting new components into factory mounting locations (designed 50 years ago) offers minimal performance improvement, and offers mainly only cosmetic appeal.
Until now, there has never been a complete solution. Roadster Shop saw the need for a complete, simple, single platform in a sea of aftermarket parts and pieces.
With many obstacles to overcome, a complete chassis was designed with the bolt-in ease of installation. The channeled front frame rail design and bolt on upper suspension mounts are engineered to fit up to the existing factory sub-rails and inner structure and bolt in place. Simply cutting off the flanges on the factory inner and outer sub rails and welding of the seam is all that is required to create the flat surface for the IFS to mount over. The factory shock towers can be retained or removed at the builder’s discretion. The factory floor requires no modifications as the chassis bolts in place through 6 additional bolt in body mounts utilizing stock mounting locations already within the body, and 2 additional body mounts that simply require drilling holes to mount.
A Mustang specific version of the SPEC IFS has been designed to work with the narrower track width of the stock mustang and allow for “off the shelf” wheel fitments. The new crossmember was engineered to work with a wide variety of engine packages.