When I initially began building the car (1995), I had to be different. Hardly anybody was running 16" wheels, in fact several people flat told me they wouldn't fit. Vintage Wheel Works was advertising the Vintage 45 - a 16x8 wheel with 4.5" backspace, that they promoted would fit vintage Mustangs with a 225/50-16 tire. I thought it would be cool to build a Shelby replica with modern upgrades. Only catch was, that for a 65/66, you had to run special upper-arms from Global West. TCP didn't even exist yet...

The Granada swap seemed a popular way to get disc brakes - everyone was doing it, so why not? Everything bolted up and looked GREAT! Car sat nice, etc.

BUT, the first time we drove it, got about 100 yards and it was rubbing the fenders big time. Got out, and it was sitting about 2" lower than back in the driveway!  Backed up to the house, got out and it was sitting fine!  With some help, we figured out that it had some toe-out, since it hadn't been aligned. Got the toe close, drove 1 mile to the alignment shop at under 30 mph. After the first hour of a "$49.95 alignment" the shop owner advised that it would be $65/hour from then out, due to the modified suspension that made alignment very difficult. I told them not to mess with caster/camber, just set the toe then....

On the way home, I found a quiet back country road. Stopped, "got on it" for the first time. The front end came up, and we were off. At about 40 mph, I noticed the front end was staying up, and the steering was REAL squirrelly. Hit the brakes, stopped, got out, and all looked good!  Repeated, coasting to the side, got out, and the front end had a 4" lift! Tried to drive, no good. Stopped, backed up, it sat back down. Drove slow & easy on the way home, all was good.

I spent several weeks messing with it, anytime you'd get on it, 4" of lift and stayed up. At 70mph, it would do the same (WILD ride!). If you got the on the brakes HARD, it would sit 2" lower than normal. With some help, I messed with toe quite a bit. Gave up and called Global West - was told it was my shocks (Magna's), which we replaced with Curerides from GW ($130/pair). Same problem.

Another call to GW. "Well, your suspension is binding.". I was running stock lower arms with urethane bushings. "You need our control arms.". $325 later they were on. Same problem.

You need a REAL alignment. Went to specialty alignment shop. 4 hours later at $75/hour ($300 ALIGNMENT!), I had a perfect alignment......and the same problem.

"You need our coil springs". $125 later. Same problem.

"Sway bar is binding" (GW) and "end links are too long" (internet). Removed sway bar (Free !). Same problem.

"It's your strut rods". $300 later. Same problem.

Turned to the internet - recommended taking the springs out. Suspension moves smoothly, no binding... hmmm... Somebody gave me the name of GW's engineer. Called him. Went thru combination - "Wait a second, what brakes did you have?" "Granada." "There's the problem, you can't run Granada brakes with our arms... Well, unless you heat/bend the spindle arm - they're are just different enough that they won't work."  GW said I could use the Granada spindles by heating/rebending them to get correct geometry, but they STRONGLY recommended NOT using Granada spindles with GW arms because of the geometry problems. He even said that they even USED to have a warning on their website...

They allowed me to return the strut rods, as they'd only been on a day. I decided to keep the rest.

Bought the book "How to Make Your Car Handle", and started reading. Learned about how to build a bumpsteer setup...

With -1/2 camber and 0 toe at rest, when I would "get on" the car, the front would lift... At 4" of lift, the tires were toed in 1.5 inches, with 5*+ of positive camber! The combination of toe & camber would "roll up" the front tires on the edges, binding the entire suspension at upper lock. Under hard braking (2 inches of drop), I was getting 3/4" of toe OUT, and -3* camber... Yep, that's 2.25 INCHES of toe change and 8* of camber change!

The Granada spindle IS slightly different than the Mustang. With skinny tires or stock suspension, no problem, because the tires slip. But when you go to wide, sticky tires and modified suspension, you can get severe toe change (bumpsteer).

I ended up ditching the Granada brakes, and got another set of 65 spindles (had already sold mine for 1/2 what the new ones cost). Researched brakes and found that Wilwoods seemed like a GREAT deal at $600. Put it all together, geometry was MUCH better (1" of toe change in 6" of travel). Got in the car - front tires rubbed! Oh, the Wilwoods increase your front track 1/2" per side - nobody thought to mention that! Changed to 205/55-16 front tires, and it all worked then. The car was actually DRIVABLE!!! Woohoo! 

Bought my own caster camber gauge ($60), and have done my own alignments ever since. Got the Baer bumpsteer kit, and got it down to 1/8" of toe change in 6" of travel (pretty good!)

This year, I ordered new wheels with an extra 5/8" of backspace, so I can go back to 225 tires - now in 17"... 

Other people have had some toe problems with Granada spindles, mainly not enough adjustment to where they shorten the tie rod end. Some spindles are worse than others, which leads me to believe that Ford made some changes somewhere along the line. I've never had the urge to research it. I would suspect that maybe 1 or 2 years are different, or ESS cars were different, or some such deal. I CAN definitely tell you that they are not all the same! The problems appear to be worse on 65/66 cars due to the narrower track, while not as prevalent on the 67-up cars.