Rear Suspension Options

I bet you Mustang guys are really glad to see this back. Well, that's too bad. We still got to wire it up, finish the roll cage and find some awnings for those tires.

But you'll see that next week.

The famous Brent Butter is finishing up the metal work on the lemons.

Then the mud starts to fly. Now after ranting and raving like Rosie o'donnell, I got my way autobody color supply came through with these custom colors for our lemons and because they're new, we got to name them Santiago gold and Buttery black, but we're not doing that today either.

Last weekend, I hit some local events,

got some great ideas, saw some radical rides,

beat up a troublemaker

and got an update on some current trends.

But what really caught my eye was the variation of rear end.

I mean, rear suspensions

looks like some old styles are back in play

some for looks most for performance.

So today we're gonna use three sets of frame rails to show you four different types of rear suspensions. The good, the bad, the ugly of each one of them, which one would work best for your project. Which one could really screw you up and the basics on how to build them

before the use of any suspension arms. All vehicles use leaf springs, not the best ride,

the more weight you put in it the worse it got.

The birth of coil springs changed everything through the forging process. Coils could be made to compress differently under various loads, giving a consistent ride, no matter what you were doing,

suspension geometry would never be the same.

This is a truck arm suspension.

It was originally used in 62 to 72 Chevy trucks. Two very long triangulated arms were the norm until the truck was redesigned in 73. These simply took up too much space.

So the room that they consumed led to their demise too bad. The ride was solid. It was predictable and it was easy to adjust. The big three never made them again. But the aftermarket did

these come from Sprik

racing? And they're an exact duplicate of originals? And I do mean exact and they come in a variety of different lengths. Why would a racing manufacturer even build these? Because the guys in NASCAR

demand it and it's all for the same reasons that we spoke about,

but it's probably the ease of adjustment that piqued their interest.

You haven't seen a car pulling into the pits. A guy jabs a ratchet in the back window and starts cranking. He's adjusting the spring height which is directly tied to the truck on. It can't get no easier than that.

They're all so easy to adapt to your project for mock up. We're using this bolt and go nine inch Ford for master power brakes, 31 spline axles and a true track posse from Detroit Locker, this beefy housing and disc brakes to stop it.

The bracket location depends on the length of the arms. You order longer for a better ride. But keep in mind where your center of gravity is.

Spiker offices. Cross member is an option if you're too lazy to make your own

general rule of thumb. If the cross members under the front seat, your arms are too long. Now, on the original trucks, the springs were mounted right here on some applications. I've seen the shock in front of the rear end or it could be mounted behind. But because of all of this space and modern technology airbag installation is a breeze.

This rear suspension setup requires a pan o bar but I prefer a sliding wishbone. It allows the rear end to move equally on both sides. A must when you're running air bags, it's nice to see guys reusing a lot of this older technology. But along with the good comes the bad. These truck arms take up a lot of space. NASCAR guys don't care about whether exhaust dumps out, they put it in, they go about

their business. But on the street it's a different story. You may not want that exhaust at the back of your door, making all that noise. I installed a set of these on a car once for a guy and he insisted that the exhaust came out in the stock location behind the rear end. That meant that I had to cut out the whole floor reconfigure everything to fit just so I could get his exhaust where he wanted it. But for him and a lot of other guys, it's well worth it.

Cars couldn't afford to lose all that space

because huge trunks and luxurious living quarters were top selling points and a triangulated four bar made it possible.

It too uses bottom bars except much shorter. The panhard bar is replaced by two top bars running at an angle. Now, you can see where geometry comes into play with the proper lengths and the proper angles. It's designed to keep the actual travel as straight as possible.

Modern technology improved on that these arms from Global West are adjustable so you can change P

angle of the rear end.

So if racing is your goal, traction can be improved for you. Low riders or high rollers, your U joint angle can be corrected when you're building this from scratch, set your arms as level as possible at ride height.

This is the most popular setup for current car building and the aftermarket knows this. You can find an endless number of designs and kit just about anywhere you look, the downside, it's limited travel isn't suited for subclasses of racing after the break. I'll show you what is,

find some suspension for your rear end because we're back on our,

I've shown you two of the four setups so far,

the old fashioned truck arms

and the more current triangulated four bar

and a little on how to fathom into your project.

Something to help you out with that. These custom rails from auto

weld. They're one of the few companies that's manual bending square tubing and it's a crazy process. They use a slip di actuator inside to keep the tubing from collapsing and they'll make them to your specifications. They're not just for looks, they're stronger that way.

Here's the rail I made, but just for the demonstration of this next setup. And it all starts with this extremely lightweight racing house for Mosier engineering. It's designed to accept the center section for a nine inch Ford. Now how a rear end reacts under a hard launch can make the difference between prize money or poverty. And there's a lot of science involved and the way to take advantage of that is with a four L

setup.

There's an infinite number of adjustments that you can make with this set up. The whole goal is to get the weight of the vehicle to work for you. You want to get as much weight on the rear end as possible for maximum traction, but you don't want a wheel stand, either you can move these bars around to find a sweet spot.

Fing

them in is simple brackets on the housing

and more on the frame.

You should start out in a neutral setting

level at the bottom

center hole on top.

Simple on a table. A little bit more involved in a car. All this tune ability could be a blessing, but it can also be a curse. There's thousands of theories on how to adjust. One of these. Here's mine in 30 seconds or less.

Last year. I put one on Mike Galley's Mustang project.

Be tuned it in

on the initial launch.

It pulled some to the right.

So I shortened the top bar on the passenger side just a bit

and that straightened it out.

But there's not enough lift in the front of traction to the rear.

Lowering both top bars in the front, moves the pivot point behind the center of gravity, forcing more weight to the rear end during the launch.

More lift,

better traction.

We'll keep it straight and off the rails.

Yet another factor we didn't discuss adjustable coil over shocks. We got these from a fo this top adjustment controls the rebound. That means how fast the shock wants to get back to its fully extended position.

This bottom one is for your compression. It controls how fast or slow the shot can press. Yet another adjustment, your spring, you can tighten it or loosen it or even get different spring rates.

Add these to the equation and you can understand just how complicated a fling

can be. Now for you street and show car guys, you set it and forget it. And they're a cool addition to your ride when covered in chrome. Now, there's another version of this and it's a whole lot simpler.

This is a four bar set up, not a four link. It's extremely limited in adjustment, threaded rods at one end is all. You get. The bars run parallel to each other. The bracket tree is simple. They don't take up a lot of space. They're ideal for street rod building.

So there you have it four different rear suspension setups to choose from. Now, there's others out there. But these are by far the more popular ones, the bottom line is you don't have to live with what your project came with. A little ref

aing time and homework are all good reasons to hide out in your garage. Now, after the break, that event, I told you about, you're coming with me.

I don't know about you, but I try to get to as many local car events as I can.

Sometimes I just stay home and make biscuits.

But when the good guys are in town,

I'll eat fast food,

believe it or not. They let me out in public every now and then today I'm hanging out at the second annual Good Guys event here in Nashville. Tennessee.

And if you've ever been to one of these things, you know, it's more than just a car show. It's a party on 10,000 Wheels. We've got, uh, over 2000 cars here this weekend and it is a blast. If you're just looking, there's a ton of eye candy here or if you're ready to get serious about your ride. There are plenty of vendors here to give you the 411 on their latest products,

live music, loud cars

and cheerleaders.

It's safe for the whole family. Well, almost, you always have to watch out for that one bully. Help me no more clowning around. We're gonna go see some cars. The thing I really like about this show is that every car drove through the gate, no trailer, Queens here. There's no excuse these days for pulling your car around.

The LS motor is really popular as of late, they make a ton of power, they're all aluminum and they're small cubic inch 364 and they're bumping 400 horse some of these things and that's added a crate.

So you get really good bang for the buck. Plus it's dependable. Hit the key drive it away.

That's what it's all about.

If you need more than 400 horses, then listen up

LS 2671 durability at its finest machine tech way to go.

This kit ships complete to your door along with the promise of 600 horses.

But you don't need a fancy motor to have a good driver.

Got a 385 Creigh

motor, uh 700 R four transmission. These bubble tops might be getting rare, but that doesn't stop Rob overhaul from putting his on the road

and it's been everywhere from the shores of the Great Lakes to the beaches of Florida.

Something tells me that the odometer on this impala has a few more clicks in it.

Putting the car on the street is where it belongs

and building it yourself. Definitely takes it up a notch. This old 32 3 window not only hits the road, but the owner did all the work in his two car garage. A lot of guys blow a wad of money farming

their work. But if you take your time, you can do most of this stuff yourself. There's a ton of tricks you can do to get that. Look that you're going for one of my favorites bagged and dropped.

When you lower a car, the car actually looks longer and it's not, that's what makes them so cool. Let's look at this for a second,

the bumper on the ground. Now,

that's what I call a parking lot. Let's decapitate a few ants just because we can,

and then the beauty of the air ride, you can just raise it up and drive away. That's what I'm talking about.

Then

there are some cars that just need to be left alone. Like this Stutter

Baker.

It's no shiner that's for sure. But it makes up for it with character

and guess what?

It's a driver.

They're all drivers. I drive on the

street, we drive it everywhere.

He drives it on the street,

it all over. That's what this game is all about. If you're not driving your car, you're wasting your time. So get out there and log some miles on it. If you've never been

to a good guys event, get to one.

I had a blast, signed some autographs, took some pictures with fans. Hey, I even got, well, you know,

not bad for a day's work, but I've still got more work to do after the break. Stick around. We'll be back in a few.

You can't do a show on rear suspensions without talking about what turns those axles. Now we dabbled in the needs for street and strip, but here are a few options to go along with that.

The standard differential only turns one wheel and we all know it's not cool to do the one wheel peal. So this is what those engineering nerds came up with. They called it a posse.

Now, we could use high tech graphics or detailed drawings to explain this, but this is my way. Right tire,

left tire when you're going down the road, you have equal power. When you make that left turn,

the right power is up to compensate when you make the right turn the left compensates the joy of this. When you make that hard left,

you have equal power all the way through.

And that's exactly how this true track posse from Eaton works. It's perfect for the streets because the transitions are nice and smooth. A

more aggressive posse for performance cars is this Detroit Locker. It uses teeth to lock everything in place instead of clutches to handle the high torque. The toughest of all for racing, only a spool, these extremely strong gears are connected directly to the axles. No left or right variations, just equal torque to both sides.

The best part is, is you can install one of these in just about any housing you might have. So the world is yours.

I'm done educating you guys on how I look at a rear end. You know, there's a bit of a rumor going around work that I'm a loose cannon and then I'm really tough to work with. So one of the guys put together this little piece, you be the judgment and tell me what you think later.

These are the kind of dangers that uh these camera guys have to go through. Sometimes,

Rob, we're turning and

shut up the

couple,

you know, a couple snaps of the

dyno

Ready

ready, Rob.

WW

That's the camera.

The cramping, I'm cramping

just trying to look at the car, look at the car.

I'm calling you off.

I'm taking care of my cameraman. We talk, we're talking like this. Ok? It's ok to look over there.

Who,

who

put it? Put

it

go? It's ok to look over there. You're gonna mess up the car.

I did do the hustle.

Dale. Ain't got nothing on me.

Wow. Wait till we bring that back to the school.

It's ok to look over there. Look at the, look at the car.

Oh,

put three clowns

backup camera back up, back up,

stop. But don't go.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're gonna,

do you think I made you pull over so I can just chit chat.

I actually,

I'm done. I'm gonna stand over here. Maybe they wanna talk to me.