Suspension

The rear axle in the firebird is a 9" Ford with 411 gears and Posi traction out of a 1970 Ford Mustang which means the wheel lug pattern is 5x4 1/2.  The front suspension of the car was upgraded to tubular control arms and disc brakes for Pontiac, the wheel lug pattern was 5x4 3/4.  My first thought was to convert the rear axle to disc brakes with matching lug pattern to the front wheels but to do that I would not only need rear disc brake conversion I would also need rear axles replaced, a cost of just over $2000.00. 

I ended up leaving the rear axle as is and had the front rotors drilled for lugs bolts to match the rear lug pattern. My neighbor Paul Tieg has a machine shop and was able to drill the front rotors precisely  ensuring the wheels fit correctly and no vibration or tire wear. 

Front suspension was upgraded to tubular upper and lower control arms, pretty beefy tubes. The coil springs were far to stiff and I wanted the front lowered by approximately 5".  I decided to cut a loop off of the coil springs however I decided to remove 2 loops (which removed about 4" off the height of the coil) and after reassembling the suspension the front end dropped about 8", way to much!  I decided to order QA1 coil overs and after 3 calls to the factory I think the coil-overs will get the front end at exactly the height I am looking for. I think a gap around 2" between tire and fender would look good in the front. After installing the coil-overs and adjusting the ride height coil I was able to get the front end height to the exact look I was going for!

The rear leaf spring suspension is too rigid, the car doesn't sag at all with the cars weight on the axle. My plan is to remove one leaf and see if I can get the rear wheel well opening to sit around  3" above the tires. 

The rear suspension consists of 4 leafs and my thought is to remove 1 leaf and see how much the car drops. Prior to removing a leaf the quarter panel sits 7" over the tire, after the leaf removal it dropped to 5", I removed a second leaf and the gap is now 4 1/4",  I am going to let the weight of the car set on the leaf and see if it relaxes a bit more, I also need to put a spare tire and jack in the trunk and that should sag the car a bit more.