Chris Alston's Chassisworks Mustang GT Rear Upgrade - The FAB9

To make room for larger meats, the mounts for the shocks were moved inboard in relation to the factory shock mounts. The mounts for the coilovers are seen here with the supplied aluminum bracket already attached.

Since this car would see race duty only, we went with the ProPower upper and lower control arms. These sturdy pieces are designed for professional drag race applications. For those cars that will see street and strip action, a set of competition moly uppers and lowers are offered in addition to the ProPower pieces.

We started the FAB9 installation by installing both of the upper control arms onto the frame. Once they were on, we snugged them down but kept them movable to obviously link up with the housing later on.

We used Varishock double-adjustable coilover shocks to grace the rear of this car. The shocks can either be mounted in the factory location or in the manner in which we installed them.

After installing the upper control arms, we put in the shocks, mounting the tops of them to the proper point on the frame. As we did with the upper control arms, we left the shocks movable to link them up with the housing.

We used a transmission jack to raise the housing into the proper spot. Once the housing was in the car, we linked it to the upper control arms and tightened them down.

We hooked up the shocks up to the housing, still leaving them slightly loose.

Here's a look at the back of the housing that shows the different position of the shocks due to the four-link design. You can see how the shocks are moved closer inboard, as opposed to the OEM mount position, which is further out on the axle tubes.

Once the shocks were hooked up, they were tightened.

To install the lower control arms, we began by hooking them to the frame mounts.

The lower control arms were adjusted and hooked up to the housing. Once mated, the lowers were tightened, securing the car's rearend. Note: The control arm bushings are offset to allow for tire clearance.

The FAB9 rear we installed came with provisions to put in an antisway bar. We began by putting the sway bar mounts onto the housing. We had previously installed the sway bar, but we'll get into details of that a bit later. Keep in mind that each sway bar mount has to be indexed from side to side.