According to Hilliard, you don't have to use the CCM Ground Pounder control arms with the coil-overs, but because of their weight advantage (they are tubular) he does recommend them.
After doing some snooping around, we were able to find the perfect car to install this kit into. If you remember our "Mustangs vs. The World" shootout in our January '01 issue, you'll recall the gorgeous Reef Blue '93 Mustang LX that belongs to Dave Salardino of Edison, N.J. Dave's '93 LX runs very well and was utilizing an aluminum lower control arm setup with a factory coil spring arrangement. The rear shocks were a set of adjustable, aluminum units that worked quite well, but the combination was not as consistent as Dave would have liked.
On 28-inch Mickey Thompson slicks, Dave's car ran a 10.35 at 134.50 mph and had a 1.48 60-ft. time. With BFG Drag Radials, the green LX could muster an 11.19 at 129.74 mph. The 60-ft. time wasn't as good as with the slicks, as the car would spin a little and he would wind up with a 1.65 60-ft. time. Dave (and I) both figured that we could improve the car's 60-ft. times on both slicks and street tires with the kind of fine tuning the coil-over set up provides.
With the CCM kit in the trunk, we headed over to LaRocca's Performance in Old Bridge, N.J., for our installation. Mustang specialist Jim Chahalis would be performing the installation on Dave's killer street car (Jim is no stranger to this LX, as he installed the Vortech supercharger and countless other items on the bad '93 a few years back).
He began the conversion by first removing the rear anti-sway bar from the lower control arms. He then removed the two bolts that hold the lower control arms onto the rear. Jim used a support jack to take some weight off of the control arm so he could slide the bolt out of the rear (the pressure of the spring will make the bolt very hard to remove).
After the rear bolt was gone, Jim slowly lowered the jack so that the pressure from the spring would be relieved. After the rear coil springs were on the floor, Jim loosened the two front bolts and pulled the control arms out from the torque boxes. Now that the old control arms were off of the car, it was time for Jimmy to start installing the new goodies.
He began the installation by first installing the two CCM GP control arms into the torque boxes and bolting them down. Before installing the back of the control arms into the rear, Jim applied some grease onto the bushings to help eliminate squeaks and add life to the bushings. He slid them into the mounting points on the rear and tightened them up. Jimmy set the pinion angle to the same spec as before we started. He got the measurement close and then fine-tuned it after the job was finished.
Next, Jim unbolted the two shocks to make room for the CCM coil-over units. To assemble them, simply slide the spring over the shock and rest it on the bracket on the bottom. Slide the top bracket over the spring and than feed the top of the threads on the shock through the hole in the trunk where the factory shock came out of.
Before you can bolt the new shock into position, you have to drill a second hole in the rear end bracket. The shock bracket on the rear has two holes in it. The bottom one measures 1/2-inch, but the top hole is much smaller and needs to be drilled to 1/2-inch as well. After Jimmy enlarged it, he slid the coil over into its new home.
After going over all of the bolts, Jim reinstalled the sway bar and bolted the two tires back onto the car. There were only two steps left. The first was to set the car's ride height. Jim lowered the car onto the ground and noted how it was sitting. Dave requested that the car be raised a little higher in the back and Chahalis agreed.
Superwrench jumped under the LX with a pair of pliers and turned the spring sleeve on the bottom of the spring perch. This allowed the spring to be raised up on the shock and actually lift up the back of the car. After Dave and Jim agreed on the proper ride height, they performed the last step of the day-setting the pinion angle.
The pinion angle is the relation between the driveshaft and the angle of the rear end. Most racers will usually set the pinion angle to approximately 3 of positive pinion angle. You have to have an adjustable upper or lower control arm to adjust the pinion angle on your car.
The CCM lower arms are fully adjustable and can be adjusted by simply turning the threaded collar, which allows the rear to change its angle by lengthening or shortening the arm itself. Jimmy installed an angle-guage onto the rear and set the pinion angle to 3.
Now for the fun part, a track test. Dave wanted to hop in his car and head on down to Atco Raceway in scenic Atco, N.J., to satisfy our eagerness. As noted earlier, with the old setup and slicks, the car was very violent off the starting line and could only muster a best 1.42, 60-ft.time. A low ET of 10.38 at 132 mph was what the scoreboard read with the old setup.
After the Ground Pounder setup was installed, the 60-ft. time improved to a 1.38 and ET dropped to 10.29 at 133 mph. That's a serious improvement.
Dave loves the car with the new coil-overs and says that his Mustang is much more stable going down the track. With a new, more powerful engine coming in Dave's future, we're sure he will take all of the traction he can get.