For help with the install,...
For help with the install, we called Dan Wolfson at DB Performance. Dan raised the car until the front wheels were a foot off the ground and removed them.
5.0&SF: Is it necessary to get your Mustang aligned after you lower it?
CS: Yes. The act of lowering the Mustang causes the camber to become more negative. Not only does the camber need to be corrected, but so does the toe setting. When camber is changed, whether from lowering the car or because of an adjustment made during the alignment procedure, the toe setting will change.
5.0&SF: Do your alignment recommendations change for lowered cars?
CS: No. Ride height doesn't have much effect on the basic alignment that works well for each car in the different situations outlined. The effects of lowering do, in turn, affect what settings can be reached. When the car is lowered, the camber becomes more negative, and the entire range of available camber adjustment will shift toward more negative. Lowering causes the caster reading to be more positive. It also lowers the roll center, which affects the camber change of the front tires during cornering, as well as the tire temperature profile. If you're setting camber based on the temperatures, the static camber setting might be slightly different.
5.0&SF: Are there any other built-in advantages to using the MM C/C Plates?
With the wheels removed, Dan...
With the wheels removed, Dan slid a floor jack under the front control arms so we could raise and lower it in relation to the rest of the car. The brake line should be unbolted from the mounting bracket and the front sway bar. That will make it easier to lower the control arm and get the strut where you can easily change the upper bumpstop.
CS: They give the strut a solid, precise, non-flexing, and low-friction mount because they replace the stock rubber mount with a spherical bearing. On lowered Mustangs, they allow for an increase in bump travel. You're also able to to install a front coilover conversion kit with the plates.
5.0&SF: Before we head to the alignment shop, we've always wondered: Is it possible to mark MM plates somehow, making it possible to toggle back and forth between street and race alignments?
CS: Yes. You can make changes to the camber and mark the plates. Remember that changing the camber will also change the toe setting. The steering rack attaches to the spindle in front of the wheel center, making the Mustang a front-steer car, thus increasing negative camber. That causes the toe setting to move toward toe-out. Some people have found that adjusting their camber to the more negative setting will cause their toe setting to move from the preferred toe-in of a street car to the preferred toe-out of a track car. You'll only know by measuring the toe before and after adjusting the camber.
5.0&SF: I read on the company's Web site that it's important to do one part of the alignment after another. Can you clarify that for the readers?
CS: Camber must always be set before setting the toe, because any change to camber will alter the toe setting. Caster should be adjusted after camber, as it's measured by extrapolation from the difference in camber as the tires are steered.
With all those tips in mind, we took our project Cobra to Dan Wolfson at DB Performance for the installation of the Maximum Motorsports caster/camber plates. We then took the car to Inver Grove Ford for an alignment based on a recommendation from the local Mustang club. As it turned out, Technician Dustin Milbrandt is a Mustang enthusiast, so he knew how to handle the adjustable plates. In fact, his Rio Red '98 GT was featured in our Oct. '06 issue ("Blame it on Rio," p. 104).
 Zip off the top strut nut....  Zip off the top strut nut. An air wrench makes the job a lot easier. |  Remove the washer, the rubber...  Remove the washer, the rubber bushing, and the sleeve from the top of the strut. |  Next, remove the nuts and...  Next, remove the nuts and bolt that hold the top and bottom strut plates together. Lower the jack under the control arm to move the lower strut plate. |