Total Control Products Coilover Rear Suspension G-Link 1967-1970

Regular viewers of this YouTube channel are probably familiar with the '70 Mach 1 parked behind me. We've done a lot of installation videos on this car, most the videos were geared towards parts that make the car a lot more fun to drive. One area we definitely focused on was steering and suspension, as the factory parts in 1970 definitely left a lot to be desired. We want this car to be an excellent road car with good manners, so we turned to Total Control and installed their coiler for our front conversion kit, along with their rack and pinion steering kit and their complete line of engine braces. Made the car a lot better so the next step is to upgrade the rear suspension. Once again, we reached out to Total Control, they set us up with their g-link rear coil conversion kit which will fit your 1967 through 1970 Mustang, today we're going to show you how to install it using our '70 Mach 1.

The Total Control G-Link Rear Coilover Suspension Conversion Kit is going to give you everything you need to convert your '67 through '70 Mustang to a four link setup. The four link’s what a lot of modern Mustangs use because it's very adjustable, it allows you to really put the power to ground. This is going to make your classic Mustang much more like a modern car as far as performance goes, it's also fully adjustable, allow you to really dial in the suspension. The four link setup's going to allow you to put power to the ground, and also make the car a lot more fun to drive. One of the main components of the kit is going to be this bolting cradle. The bolting cradle's going to go up to the floor of your Mustang, provide a lot of the key mounting points for the four link. It's also going to include adjustable upper and lower arms. You can see the lowers right here, the big thing about these is they have pivot ball ends on both sides. By getting rid of any kind of a rubber bushing and using the pivot balls, is going to require no flex in the suspension, again, allowing you to put the power to the ground without any kind of worries about wheel hop.

The coilover was provided, use the VariShock quick set two rear shocks. These are sixteen way adjustable shocks that have different control for both your rebound and your compression. They also include a set of mounting brackets and these two hundred pound springs that are perfect for a street car. The nice thing about this setup is depending on where you actually mount these on the suspension, you have up to four and a half inches of ride height adjustment. Finishing off the rear suspension from Total Control is their g-link sliding adjustable anti-roll bar. This is going to work specifically with this suspension system and be adjustable, do a great job controlling roll on our '70 Mustang. Unlike the front coiler over conversion from Total Control which were a full bolt on, the rear coiler over conversion will require some welding so it may not be the best installation for a first timer, the welding's not terribly difficult or hard to do but it is something that is required and is very important that it's done right, so make sure you have access to a welder before you begin the installation.

Like some of our other installs, we're not going to list the tools for this job because you're going to need a lot of them. You're going to want a well-stocked toolbox, all your basic hand tools, torque wrenches, stuff like that. In addition, unlike some of our installs, you are going to need a welder, so to make sure you watch the video first that you have the right tools and know how to use them before you begin this installation.

Beginning the installation you want to remove all the factory components. Before you do so, you want to take a few measurements so you have something to go off of with the new suspension. We're going to measure from the center of the axle to the quarter, and also from the ground to the quarter. The ground to quarter on ours is 26 1/2, and it's 14 1/4 from the center of our axle to our quarter panel. We're going to start the dis-assembly process by removing the back seats so we can access our shock bolts, plus with welding you want the backseat out of the way as well. Also, make sure you disconnect your battery. After that we'll move under the car, remove the entire rear assembly, the rear differential, all those pieces, the exhaust, everything that could possibly be in the way is going to have to be removed. A lot of these components are heavy and definitely on the larger side, so get some help for this part. Remove the seat by just pulling up on it. Now we're going to move under the car and start dis-assembly here.

The first thing we're taking off is the exhaust system, in most cases, this will be bolt on and will come off pretty easily, in our case somebody actually did weld it at one point, so we'll have to cut. While RK is pulling the wheels, I'm going to work on the driveshaft. We'll move on to the sway bar next. Now we'll move on to the brakes, we'll start by disconnecting the emergency brake. Now you want to use a jack of some sort to support the rear because we're going to start taking off the bolts to remove the rear itself. You don't have to bleed the whole braking system, what we're going to do is actually remove the brake line from the differential, move these little clips so the lines are all free and we'll just let them hang. At this point you've got two options, you can either remove the front bolts and the shackles to the leaf springs, pull the whole thing out together, or you can separate the rear from the leaf springs, kind of pull it all out. Since we're up on a lift it's easier just to separate everything while we're here. If you are working on the ground though, you may want to pull the whole thing out at once. Now we can slowly pull the rear out and put it aside for now.

Once the rear's out of the way you want to move to the interior and unbolt the shocks. Notice for one second here we removed all of our sound deadening. That area is actually where we'll be welding underneath the car, you want to make sure that area is clean before you start. Now we're ready to begin the actual installation of our rear suspension. Before you do so though, there's five key structural areas in the car where it's going to mount that you want to make sure are in good shape before you begin. If they're not you want to make sure they get repaired or the suspension could suffer. The first section you want to check is the front area where your leaf springs mount, you want to check this on both sides, make sure this is solid, there's not cracks or damage or rust. I mean, we're in here, this is actually where your front control arm is going to mount. The next section we want to look at is the rear frame, right this section here, there's going to be a bracket that goes right over this, you want to make sure this is in solid shape, not expanding, there's no extra holes or rust anywhere on here.

The last area to look at is right in the middle here, in the transmission tunnel, this is the area where actually, I showed you from the inside of the car, we're going to be welding a seam along this edge to strengthen this area here because this is a very important mounting point. The car is going to be raced, running slicks and tons of power, you probably actually want to brace this from the inside as well and put a plate on the other side to reinforce it further, our case just welding it will be fine. We're going to want to grind that section down before we can actually weld it, the first thing we're going to do is move our fuel lines out of the way. What we're going to do now is since we have it all ground down to bare metal, we're ready to actually weld it. What we're going to do is basically weld the edges, the plan being to strengthen this up, from the factory it's held in by spot welds which are fairly strong, but given this is an important structural point for the suspension, we want to beef it up.

Once you finish the welding you want to put a coat of paint over it because there is some bare metal exposed. Now we can move on to the brackets and mount to the frame. These brackets will eventually be welded in place so before we test them or do anything else, we want to get a grinder, basically just take off the edge here, all the zinc coating, you want to remove it because we're going to be welding later. With the brackets cleaned up, now we're going to loosely bolt them to the cradle itself, put the whole assembly up in to place and start marking it. When you go to test fit the cradle make sure you grab this spacer plate and these bolts, these will hold the center in place. What we're doing here is we're bolting it in with spacer plate in the front, we're going to hold the brackets in the frame because we have to figure out where exactly they're going to fit and then we're going to clamp them on so we can mark them.

At this point you want to adjust the cradle a little bit to get it lined up, and then it's like some of the holes here, the factory shock hole's off a little bit, that side's off a little bit, with it clamped in place what you want to do is just grab a mallet, and there's no real fancy way to do it, and just hammer it to adjust it in place. Depending on your car or what you're working with, this part's going to be a little time consuming, you want to make sure you get the cradle perfectly lined up, or the suspension's going to suffer once you have it actually finally installed. You may have to make some changes, clearance a few sections if you have to but make sure everything is perfectly lined up before you move on to the next step. And this is what the finished cradle should look like when you're done. You want to make sure anywhere you welded you want to put paint over it so it doesn't rust in the future, but now that we're done with this part, we can move on to the rear end.

Now we're going to move on to our 9 inch rear. Both the brackets for the upper and lower control arms are going to install on this. The upper is relevant place, the other one is going to bolt on to the outside edges here. The upper location is going to be very important, we have to actually remove the third member because they include this weld fixture. This is going to bolt up here and give us the precise location for welding on our upper brackets. This is the fixture we're going to bolt on to the housing to give us a location for welding our upper brackets in place. You notice there's two holes, one hole is going to say 1/2 inch, the other one is for a centered pinion. What this is, is basically what you want to do is measure where your pinion is in your car, if you have a stock rear, 8 inch, or 9 inch, it's going to be in the middle, it's going to be a centered pinion but you still want to measure to make sure you use the correct holes. This will work for the 9 inch or 8 inch rear, but the 8 inch bolt holes will not line up so you will have to clamp it in place. In our case we have a 9 inch in our Mach 1 so this will work perfectly.

We're going to start the tear down of our 9 inch rear by removing the axles, then we're going to remove the differential itself. This is something you actually could've done in the car, if you wanted to leave the rear in the car for now, you could take it all apart and then remove it, we have enough space it's not a big deal, but if you're working in a small garage it might not be a bad idea. We're going to start by removing the brackets for our rear disc brakes, probably aren't going to have these on your car unless you bought an SSBC kit, we got to take these off first, then we can unbolt the axles and remove them next. The axle may just fall out at this point, I may have to give it a little bit of a tap just to get it budged. Make sure you're careful just taking it off, if you have any shims you don't want to lose them. Put the rear on jack stands and put a pan underneath it, now we're going to remove all the nuts that hold the third member to the housing.

With the diff completely drained, now we're just going to clean it up before we actually start installing the brackets, want to make sure the surface where the gasket goes is cleaned up, make sure there's no extra fluid anywhere on the housing. With the rear cleaned up we're going to assemble the fixture now that's going to go on the differential. Basically, what you want to do, these are going to go on top here, and you're going to screw them down. Now we're going to attach the brackets to our fixture, then test fit everything on the housing. At this point just put these on loosely, but make sure you put them on the right sides as well, they are driver and passenger side specific. Now we're going to put the welding fixture down in to place, again, you want to make sure you use the correct holes. You have zero for a center pinion or you have 1/2 inch for the offset pinion. Our case it's zero, so make sure you use those holes there. So let's sit the bracket on the rear and then slide it on. This is going to get you roughly in place, these are going to sit pretty tight if you have everything properly in place.

What you'll want to do now is measure from the edge of these brackets out to the edge of our axle tubes and make sure these measurements are the same. If these are off in any way you may have an offset pinion and didn't realize it, you'll want to go back and figure out where the issue is, but if they're normal then you can tighten these bolts up and prepare to weld. We're going to take our measurements here, and we're within about 1/32 of an inch, you're not going to get much closer than that. What we're going to do now is, we know everything is going to line up properly, we'll clean the axle off in this area here and get ready to weld. I'm marking this area here, it's not as aligned or anything like that, just so I know exactly where I want to clean off the rear end. Now we'll take the fixture off and grind this area smooth and clean so we can weld. Now we're going to put our fixture back on. Clean off just a little bit more. Okay, with everything cleaned off and tight, now you want to tighten the hardware down, just to make sure everything's where it belongs before you weld the brackets.

With the fixture installed double check everything is tight, seems like it's supposed to be, take one more measurement just to double check and then you're ready to weld. We're just going to put a couple tack welds in place to start. Once everything is welded in place, let the welds cool down, then you can remove the bracket, prime and paint the welds. Now we're going to prime and paint the brackets. While we're waiting for that to dry we can install our lower control arm brackets to our housing. These are going to mount right where the factory spring perches are, this little stud in the middle here will go right in the hole in the center which actually makes it line up really nicely. One more thing, these are side specific so make sure this curved sheet metal here is facing inward. When tightening these down you want to make sure you tighten them evenly so you have basically the same amount of thread coming through each side. Once we get them snug, we're going to go back through and torque them down. We're going to torque them to 60 foot pound. With the lower control arm brackets mounted and torqued down to spec, now we're going to come back and paint the brackets for the uppers.

Before the rear housing goes back in to our '70, we're going to prepare our upper control arms. The way they're going to start, center to center the mounting hole, you want to be 9 1/2 inches. Out of the box it can be somewhat shorter so what you do is turn this turn buckle here to adjust them. Now we're going to lock it down, just get it snug for now. We'll have to adjust it on the car. Now we're going to prep the lowers, the lowers we're going to want 21 inches, again, from center to center. Just get that snug for now, we'll tighten it down later. Okay, they're ready, now we'll do the same thing with the other side. Now we're going to jack the rear up in to place again. Now we're going to put the upper control arms in to place first, the non-adjustable end goes in the cradle, and the threaded end goes actually in the house, and you use the bottom hole on the cradle and the top hole on the rear end. Now we're going to install the lower control arms, this is going to go back where your leaf spring originally was. The solid side goes forward, the adjustable side goes towards the back. Again, just hand tight for now. In the rear we're going to go with the middle hole. Get it hand tight and repeat the process on the other side.

Before we tighten them up we're going to want to install the grease fittings in the lowers, the uppers do not require them with this kit. Now we're going to go through and torque all the bolts down, 65 foot pound. With everything tightened down now we're going to grab the brackets for the shock mount. They are side specific, there'll be a P and a D for passenger and driver. You want to leave one hole open at the bottom for starters, put the bolts through there. Now we're going to torque these to 35 foot pound. Now we're going to support the rear so we can adjust our ride height. Now we're going to measure and set up our base line ride height. Total Control recommends starting with 13 1/2 inches, that's a measurement from the middle of your bracket here to the center of the middle hole for the mount for the upper shock bracket. What you want to do is get that to about 13 1/2 then you want to go back to the measurements you took originally from the wheel well to the center of the wheel, and see if they're similar or in the same area and that will give us a baseline to go off of. 14 1/4, so I've got to go up.

Our measurements were at 14 1/2 is what I'm getting on both sides, now original suspension, we were at 14 1/4 on one side, 15 on the other, probably because of worn original suspension. Right now we're even on both sides so we're good to go. Now we'll put the supplied spacers on the mounts and we're going to install the shocks to the cradle. Now you want to use your pull jacks, jack whatever you're using, put the rear up and down a couple times, maybe some off camber, make sure you have no potential binding issues or clearance problems. Everything looks good I think we're ready to install the coiler over springs. Let's start by installing the adjustable lower collar on to the shock. You can take the shock off if you want or just leave it hanging on the car. As you turn this you'll feel the set screws actually popping in to place as you turn. Screw down as far as you can then turn it upward until you feel them click in to place. You may have to compress the spring a little bit to get this cap in to place, use whatever means are necessary.

Now we're ready to put this back up and bolt it to our cradle. With the shocks mounted, now we can tighten them up. Now we'll torque them to 50 foot pound. Now that most of our suspension's installed we're going to reassemble our 9 inch, put our axles, brakes, and everything back together, and the last step of the process is to install Total Control products G-Link sliding rear anti-roll bar. Before you get too deep in the reassembly, we're not going to show you a lot of the details on that since you already took it apart, but be careful when putting the gasket on, with a 9 inch rear the gasket does only fit one way. The last step of the installation of the kit is to install the G-Bar sliding link anti-roll bar. What we're going to do on the table here is install the bushings first, then put the bar up in to place. We're going to put some of the supplied grease on the bushing, you want to make sure there's a slit in the bushing, when this is on the bar you want that slit facing forward. Before we install it we're going to install the grease fittings on the brackets.

Now we're going to bolt the G-Bar up to the brackets we welded to the frame earlier, in the case of our '70 it does have a fuel injection system on it so we have a larger fuel pump here that we moved out of the way to make it easier to see. You also want to make sure you disconnect the wire for your setting unit, that's actually going to go around the bottom of the bar. Now we're going to torque the brackets to 30 foot pound. Once you get the bar in to place, before you put the end links on, just take a quick measurement, you want to get the bar as centered as possible before you put the n-links on. Now we can assemble the end links. This is the hardware provided to build the end links for the bar. This is basically what you're going to have when you have a finished product. This side here will bolt to the actual suspension, and this is going to go up and this is going to connect to the bar itself. We want to measure the link then before it goes in the car, we're going to start with 4 1/2 inches center to center.

Start by connecting the bar at the top, there's going to be three indentations on the top of the bar, it's actually what this set screw goes in to. You want to use the one at the very front, that's going to be the softest setting. And do the same thing on the other side. Before we tighten everything down, we'll start with the top so we can install the lock nut. Now we're going to adjust the lock nuts on the turn buckle. Now we're going to go through and grease all of our fittings. Repeat the process on the other side and the installation is finished. I want to mention that you will more than likely need to have a custom exhaust made, where original tailpipes went over the axle they're probably not going to clear so plan on having a set of custom tailpipes built when you finish your installation. I put a little more emphasis on the installation is finished because at this point it's time to adjust the suspension, the Total Control suspension is very adjustable, you've all kinds of different mounting locations, lots of adjustments you can make on this, it's almost infinite the amount of different combinations you can do.

The adjustments we went with as far as bolt locations for everything and what was suggested by Total Control. At this point what you'd want to do is dial in the shocks, pick the rebound you want, pick the compression you want, you can work on the ride height by making adjustments here. All these adjustments are pretty easy to make but they are very time consuming, so I'm not going to show you how to do it, but Total Control provides detailed instructions of all the adjustments including the variable shocks. As far as the installation goes as a whole, I would say give yourself a weekend, this is definitely not a Friday night install, it's going to take some time to do it right, but take your time, get everything adjusted, you'll be back on the road in no time.