Mopar suspensions of the late 40s and early 50s were light years ahead of the Ford and Chevy stuff.


The design of the independent front suspension is pretty good with the exception of the upper shock mount location which has already been mentioned. A simple set of bolt on F1 shock mounts will solve the issue. From there a basically bolt on disc brake kit from RustyHope.com works great. I used this on my second 48 Plymouth coupe with just a standard stock rebuild of the rest. My first I paid a pretty good sum to have a Nova subframe installed and other than gaining the disc brakes and power steering it did not ride / drive any better than the stock setup.

Rebuilding the stock front you can easily do in a weekend and the disc brakes was about a days work.

Going with the 360 take a look at Butchs Cool Stuff he has very reasonably priced engine/transmission mounts for the small block Mopar into the early 50s Mopars. You can get around the steering box in a coupe different ways. One is to offset the engine about 1.5 inches to the passenger side. Butchs mounts come in either offset or standard. The other is to go with a rack and pinion as has already been mentioned. Fatmans makes a nice kit and also sells dropped spindles if you want to lower it.