I know this has been covered before but have lost my copy of how its done. Didn't find anything in the Archives. What does it take to do it, and does it truly drop the frontend as an extra added bonus?
I plan on doing this swap on mine in the near future. As I understand it, the only modification needed for this swap is that the lower balljoint hole and outer tie rod hole need to be re-tapered, if memory serves me, to a 7 deg. taper. I found that if you have the spindels already, you can send them to Fatman Fab. and they will cut the taper for you for I think 60 buck a side. Check there website. I hear it's not all that hard to do yourself with the right taper and patience. The swap is supposed to give you anywhere from 1" to 1 1/2" drop in the front. If you don't want the drop and don't want to deal with the the taper modification, then the 77 to 79 Thunderbird is supposed to be a complete bolt on. Lots of good info on this site: http://pub70.ezboard.com/b1957fords98638
. I sent mine to fatman. I think it was just the lower ball joint taper that needed to be opened for the 57 ball joint stud. If you are going to do more than 1 set, then buying the reamer may be cost effective.
Granada stuff seems to be getting harder to find, at least in So. Cal. There are other options. I had a set of Granada spindles, but ended up using 1968 LTD stuff instead. The full size car spindles bolt right on, you just have to use Ltd tie rod ends. These will thread right on to the stock 57 pieces. The only drawback to the fullsize brakes is that they will not fit under a 14" wheel. I planned on running 15" wheels, so that wasn't a problem. I like the fact that I have bigger brakes, designed for stopping a bigger car, since I'm putting them on a fairly large car.
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