Rear lower control arms

[Corrugated]

Hi guys,

Doing some rear suspension work on my 85.5 and considering changing / upgrading the original rear lower control arms. Car is street driven, with some minor suspension upgrades now done (new Koni's, Motorsport B springs, M/M caster camber plates, some poly bushings), with handling improvements being the build focus. Any suggestions on what brand / style of arm to go with? I see numerous manufacturers available..(Maximum Motorsports is kind of where I'm thinking though..)..

Thanks!

[Desert Patina]

I did a lot of research on this and there are a few trains of thought:

1) The stock setup for all around driving is better / safer than a poly-bushing setup. The problem is how the arms want to twist for each arm's up and down motion (not to mention when one arm is going up while the other is going down). The problem with bind is how things snap back, which is what the quads in the rear are trying to fight. I chose to keep the stock arms for this reason. You might note that the 94-2004 mustangs made the body side bushing oval to give more allowance, that might be a good idea too.

2) The people that understand this best is probably MM who did a lot of research that they published showing how the bushings evoke binding. This research went so far as to convince them it is better to run with pipe insulation bushings on one of the upper arms to effectively disable it rather than let it bind. Their lower control arms are the most accomodating for this, but Ken Brown also tries to accomodate in his own way.

3) To start fixing the 4-link problem one would either do a PM3L (google "PM3L Mustang") which instead of disabling one of the upper arms, just removes it. Then move to a three link when you get the money, and it seems most people do even though it shows improvement on the 4Link.

4) That said, some people also try to fix the 4-link by using spherical bushings on the lowers, just on one end (I think it is the body end), which means a solid un-damped link which causes noise. But even the MM tests acknowledge if you could go spherical on all arms, all ends, the bind problem is gone. But if you choose the uppers (like the cheap ali-express uppers), and the wrong ends, that just transfers more bind to the lowers, which are less able to handle it.

That said, the Global West lowers were the ones I favored the most, but I couldn't bring myself to pay the prices. And at some point, the Panhard or Watts link really does have better results for just a little more money and some exhaust re-routing.