EASY AS 3, 2, 1

Part 1: Crown Vic Front End Swap

Team321’s most popular products are mounting kits for installing independent rear suspensions and narrowed Crown Vic front suspensions. Among many of the advantages, the narrowed track width that is reduced by 4 3/4 inches to just over 62 inches hub to hub really opens up a whole new world for the older Ford pickups.

Customer feedback drives new product development, and the overwhelming feedback was that customers wanted to use the Crown Vic front suspension but wished the track width wasn’t quite so wide. Team321 took on this challenge and designed a weld-in steel crossmember to mount the Crown Vic suspension components—including control arms, knuckles, bearings, brakes and sway bar links. Due to the narrowed track width, you cannot use the factory sway bar or steering rack. This is not a cut/weld of the factory crossmember as Team321’s Narrow Crown Vic crossmember is a purpose-built crossmember that fits the F-100 frame with no modifications.

Team321 offers two packages. The base package includes the crossmember, upper control arms, all mounting hardware and sway bar. The complete suspension package adds the lower control arms, steering rack, coilovers, knuckles, steering tie rods and sway bar links.

The narrowed track width crossmember solves a variety of issues, like the increased wheel options. Beyond the benefits of narrowing the track width, the crossmember is designed for mounting coilovers—opening up an endless selection of spring rates and allowing for fine tuning the ride height. For those looking for air, Ridetech Shockwaves can also be used. The steering rack is sourced from a Lincoln Mark 8, and brake options begin with factory Crown Vic disc brakes and include 14-inch or larger Wilwood options. Motor mount options include small block and big block Ford V-8s, Ford Mod motors and Coyote V-8s while adding more selections as customers request them.

TEAM321 IS LOCATED IN COCOA BEACH, Florida, near the Kennedy Space center. While most folks associate world class surfers or “I Dream of Jeannie” when they hear Cocoa Beach, Dave Held of Team321 has been here designing and fabricating away on suspension products for F-100s as well as other custom builds for years.

Team321 is able to operate with all of the capabilities of a larger company while catering to the specific needs of individual customers. Thanks to the proximity to the Kennedy Space Center, Team321 is able to leverage high tech local suppliers for all CNC operations without the overhead of maintaining such machines. Local suppliers have been providing products and services to Dave and team for almost two decades and are key to Team321’s success.

For Part 1 of this install we’ll walk you through the setup and modifications, and then for Part 2 we’ll visit the completed and painted versions. Stay tuned as Team321 rolls out new suspension products and of course we’ll keep you up to date with all the latest and greatest here at the F-100 BG HQ.

Once our F-100 frame is stripped down, we marked our axle centerline. (You will want to do this before the suspension is removed and then come in and make the line more noticeable once all of the suspension is removed.)

To secure the crossmember in place we used c-clamps and then added a few strong tack welds throughout.

Next, we mark a line 8 inches forward and 8 inches rear of the axle centerline.

Team321 thought of everything, and they include a nice triangle guide to help with centering the crossmember in place.

Then we used those two as the guide to line up the Team321 crossmember between the two 8-inch marks.

Here’s how she looked so far with the crossmember mocked up and the steering rack installed.

Once properly fitted, we installed the Crown Vic power steering rack in the provided tabs.

This isn’t always necessary, but we went with a Crown Vic steering rack and we needed to cut it down a little because the new crossmember is a bit narrower per side.

09 Next up, we installed the upper control arms and provided tie rod ends.

We chose optional coilovers to allow for some adjustability and drop, while still keeping cornering and ride quality characteristics that we are after with this particular build.

The factory lower control arms were installed next, and here’s where the magic happens when using this narrowed clip. Now our ride characteristics, spindle, steering and track width will all be improved tremendously.

the arms in place, the next step was to install the spindles.

Next, we installed the tie rod ends and could begin to tighten everything in place.

The wheel hubs will allow for upgraded disc brakes and open up a ton of options here as well

The Team321 kit offers several motor mount configurations to fit numerous swap options

We connected the brake lines and we’re pretty much all set. In part 2 of this series, we’ll show it all torn back down and painted for completion and then back under the truck. Stay tuned!

Although we went with a standard disc brake option now, we might upgrade down the road depending on budget and time.