Justian;104644 wroteNot planning on racing the car or anything like that, just want it to handle a little better than my last one and sit lower.
Wanna make it handle for the street without spending a fortune and changing things to the extent you need an engineer's report?
Go 30% stiffer and 1 inch lower in the front springs and have shocks to suit. Give it about 1.5 to 2 degrees negative camber if you're going to drive it hard on the street, and dial in as much positive caster as you can get (+4 degrees is good), and 30 seconds of toe-in. Go to a 25mm front sway bar, reinforce the brackets on the lower 'A' arms for the sway bar mounts, and bush all the sway bar mounts with urethane. Together with 30% stiffer rear springs, good tyres, suitable shocks, and a smallish sway bar (about 21mm) will make the thing handle like it's on rails. In a 164E, you will have the capacity to easily run away from any modern-day road gnat in corners, and leave most things on the road for dead.
The 140 / 164 front end is a good enough base to work with, without needing to cut and drill and slice and grind and weld. The main problem with 140s is the antique steering box that requires numerous turns lock-to-lock; the 164 however doesn't have that issue, because of the very good power steering box.
Convicted con-men like Robert Jackson tried to exploit the 120 / 1800 market by offering to supply modified Mustang front ends (which he almost never delivered!), because the 120 / 1800 front ends had a number of weak points that made themselves apparent with age. However, if you look at
@Vee_Que's Amazon build thread, you can see how he fixed the flaws in the front end very well, without mortgaging the farm. Although the 140 / 164 front end is similar in appearance, it is far stronger in many areas.
