Granada Splndles

[rovohn]

Just wondering, will all Granada spindles work or only specific years?
Thanks,John

[rixxwagon]

1975 to 1980

[Tom S]

Just wondering, will all Granada spindles work or only specific years?

After learning that with Granada spindles you can't get the alignment that '57s need, mainly lack of castor, I wouldn't use them.  I'd go with something that adapts disks to the stock '57 spindles
The Ranchero I bought already had Granada spindles & brakes.
Heavy use of winter studded tires here leaves parallel tire track groves in the asphalt of heavily traveled roads.
Even on mildly worn lanes this causes my Ranchero to quickly swerve all over the lane to the point of swapping lanes.  It can get scary. Got to fight it all the way.
I believe this is due to the lack of castor. Other cars are also affected but it seems to be more pronounced with those that have a short wheel base.  Doesn't seem to bother my old Econoline with a 123.5" wheel base or another '57 with stock spindles that I drove.

One option for keeping your stock spindles is using the Scarebird caliper adapters. Uses over the counter parts to go with the adapters.  I think Scarebird can tell you what else you need to buy at your local auto parts store.
Google search results
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=scarebird+disk+brakes+1957+Ford

1957-68 full size Ford or 1961-68 Mercury
https://scarebird.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=65&product_id=88

An install with pix on a 1964 Galaxie.
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/1957-68-ford-merc-full-size-scarebird-disc-install.817578/


     

[RICH MUISE]

I'm not going to suggest I know anything about front end problems/ alignment issues etc, but I do think there is a lot more affecting handling issues than isolating Granada spindles as the root cause. I have the Granadas on mine and I have no handling issues. I was also told that stock castor specs is at zero, but the rack and pinion I have likes more negative castor. So, stock specs zero, but my alignment guy was able to get to -2 with the Granada spindles, which is short of what would be good for the rack and pinion, but still more than what it would be set at if stock.
I suspect a common root cause is almost all of us use front tires that are quite a bit wider than what the car was designed for, and overall condition of the 60+ year old steering and suspension.
I did get 27k miles out of my first set of front tires that eventually wore the inside edge down to the nubs on both sides. I did have some high speed handling issues on windy days, but that turned out to be caused by excessive rake. I dropped the rear with 1" lowering blocks (back to stock height), and that took care of the windy day wandering. I do realize that lowering a back end helps with the castor. Making that change may also help with front tire wear. Not sure if I'll ever find that out.

[hiball3985]

Different people have been able to get better results then others. This is most likely caused by tolerance stack one way or the other. 1957 precision building had wide + - tolerance and probably varied from assembly plant to plant. All so consider how much the frames may have twisted for different reasons over the years..

[Tom S]

I'm not going to suggest I know anything about front end problems/ alignment issues etc, but I do think there is a lot more affecting handling issues than isolating Granada spindles as the root cause. I have the Granadas on mine and I have no handling issues. I was also told that stock castor specs is at zero, but the rack and pinion I have likes more negative castor. So, stock specs zero, but my alignment guy was able to get to -2 with the Granada spindles, which is short of what would be good for the rack and pinion, but still more than what it would be set at if stock.
I suspect a common root cause is almost all of us use front tires that are quite a bit wider than what the car was designed for, and overall condition of the 60+ year old steering and suspension.

Rich, I'm certainly not an 'expert' but I do have a fairly good knowledge of front suspensions & aliment. It doesn't make sense to me that my other vehicles with similar size tires & wheels do not react the same as my Ranchero with the Granada spindles.  One of them with a much shorter wheelbase is affected buy the groves in the road but to a much lesser degree. 
Positive castor self-centers the wheels & provides straight line stability. Cars with negative castor are prone to wandering.
I thought cars always had & needed positive castor but learned that some older cars didn't. Seems that on those that didn't it was only done to make the steering lighter, meaning easier to turn the steering wheel, since they did not have power steering.  Now days most, if not all, cars have positive castor.
The Ranchero drives ok on roads or the area of roads without the grooves.  I doubt that your roads have these grooves to contend with.
I can't see any reason why your rack & pinion would like zero or negative castor.  I wonder how you determined that?
I can't say that I've seen that the castor spec for our '57s is zero but not sure if I'd seen any stock alignment specs verified.
I've certainly seen complaints here about the lack of castor with the Granada spindles though.
I've got a factory service manual for 1958 Edsels & assume that 1957 Fords would use the same alignment specs.
Was surprised to see that two models did use zero to negative castor. Maybe they were trying to make the steering lighter.
I don't know diddly about Edsel models but saw that the two with the zero castor spec were the only ones that got the 410 engine.  All others got a 361.


   
 

[RICH MUISE]

I may have misspoke about the negative vs positive on the castor. My memory isn't too good, I have the alignment specs the shop set the car to somewhere. I'll try to find it and see which way we were trying to go. I remember we were talking about the fact that I was planning on dropping the back end a little, and I was told "that'll help with the castor", so when you lower the back end does it make the castor more negative or more positive? If the answer is more positive, that would confirm that I mispoke about negative castor in my previous post.

[Tom S]

...so when you lower the back end does it make the castor more negative or more positive?

Gettin' a bit rusty on my trigonometry but with a 116" wheel base lowering the rear by 1" would increase positive castor by 0.494 degrees if I did right. That's a lot more than I thought it would.
I need to get an older computer that will run my old Autocad program. Then I could show a pic of the changed angle. 

[RICH MUISE]

Then I stand corrected.........it was positive castor we were trying to increase.

[hiball3985]

The Ford manual has similar specs. Caster 1/2 to 1 1/2 and Camber 1/2 to 1 1/2. Whats funny is it doesn't say + or -. I assume the caster is + but not sure about camber? I would have a assumed the camber would be - but the Edsel spec shows + ?

[lalessi1]

Gettin' a bit rusty on my trigonometry but with a 116" wheel base lowering the rear by 1" would increase positive castor by 0.494 degrees if I did right. That's a lot more than I thought it would.
I need to get an older computer that will run my old Autocad program. Then I could show a pic of the changed angle. 

The caster is changed by the same angle of the change in rake, I was very surprised by that simple fact!

[hiball3985]

The caster is changed by the same angle of the change in rake, I was very surprised by that simple fact!

Yes it is, I would gain more caster by lowering the back but I like the rake so I'm stuck. Mine has a small amount of wander at 65 mph, it's easy to deal with, but it is more stable at 95 mph?

[Tom S]

Then I stand corrected.........it was positive castor we were trying to increase.

Rich, someone here had suggested that zero degrees camber seemed to work best with our modern tires & aftermarket power steering so I kept thinking that you got your castor number mixed up with camber.
I'd searched high & low for the correct stock '57 Ford caster spec with no luck.
I did run across a 2016 thread where you did say you were using positive castor & that lowering the rear would give you more of what you were seeking in that respect.  Someone in that same thread said that Borgeson recommends 3 degrees of positive castor.
Also saw several instances where people said we should be using a lot more castor than than what was originally called for on our old cars if using radial tires &/or power steering.
It does make sense that lowering the rear of your car & slightly increasing castor helped with stability in high crosswinds.
Some guys racing on the Bonneville Salt flats jack in a ton of excess castor. Saw several car's front wheels slapping back & forth from lock to lock when being pushed off due to so much castor.  My Roadster did that once just after crossing some railroad tracks that were at the top of a short & abrupt rise.
Never happened again.
Even though I think most of us we should now disregard the stock castor spec as outdated thanks to 'Hiball' Jim for those stock'57 Ford castor & camber specs.

[hiball3985]

Tom, If I had known about this issue with the caster before I had completely rebuilt my front end I would have taken a different approach. If and thats a BIG IF I did it again I would mill off some material on the upper A frame pivot arm pads where the shims go. But I'm reaching a point in time where I'm not sure I would tackle it now.

[Ford Blue blood]

The Ford manual has similar specs. Caster 1/2 to 1 1/2 and Camber 1/2 to 1 1/2. Whats funny is it doesn't say + or -. I assume the caster is + but not sure about camber? I would have a assumed the camber would be - but the Edsel spec shows +

Positive camber was used to make cars "safer" to drive.  The handling characteristics of those early cars was they would plow, or push as they approached the limits of traction.  The easiest way to correct that situation was to slow down, there-by "saving" lives.  By allowing inexperienced drivers to get out of situations with the touch of the brake pedal the engineers could brag of their safe cars.

Any person that has road racing experience can attest to the major impact of minor alignment changes, both castor and camber.