jasond393

Ever since I first got my car on the road with its mild 302 I have had some el-cheapo slapper bars on it. The chrome lakewood special that do more for boat anchors than they do for traction. Now that I have the 393 in it I am looking to reduce my 60 foot times from the mild 1.68 to hopefully a 1.50 or so. After some research I came to the conclusion that the cal-trac bars would best suit my needs, just not my budget.

I looked everywhere online that I could think of for some measurements but I only found two websites that listed any, and they were way off from one to the other. I headed down to the track late last year and found a friend that I have been talking to that owns a 67 coupe that he drag races. I looked under his car and sure enough, he had a set. I asked his permission to take some measurements and he said "sure, no problem".

Ever since then I have been slowly making my own set. I thought that I would post up here what I have found as I find it out. This will not be speedy for how little I have to do, but I have a busy life and this gets put on the back burner more than I would like.

This is what I am trying to emulate:



Here is the measurements that I took for the front plates:



And these are the measurements that I took for the rear plates that will need to be welded to the rear spring plate. This picture is upside down from how they will mount:




I started off making the front plates. I first drilled pilot holes, then bolted them together to make sure that the final holes were correctly aligned.





I then sanded them and painted them flat black.



What I am doing is running solid bushings in the front of the leaf spring. Within that aluminum bushing is a steel sleeve that the bolt goes through and the bushing pivots on. The steel sleeve is wider than the aluminum bushings so that when you tighten the bolt the sides of the spring perch do not touch the aluminum bushing. I measured it and found out I can run a 3/16" plate in that gap that will pivot on the steel sleeve (3/4" outside diameter) on both sides of the aluminum bushing. That is what I ended up making the front plates out of. All of the holes that I drilled in that plate are 3/4" because that is what I needed to clear the steel sleeves and also I am using 3/4" bolts for the rest of the system.

On the part just behind the front bushing, on top of the spring, I am just using a 3/4" bolt with a bushing between the plates measuring 2.72" and has an inside diameter of .750". On the bottom part that has the hiem joint I used a 3/4" hiem joint with 3/4" threads and spacers of .92" on either side of that.

This is a picture of the hiem joint and spacers on the 3/4" bolt, without the front plates. I did this to show how it will sit in between the plates (imagine the plates on the outside of the spacers, but the bolt head and nut will be on the outside of the plates)



This is how far I have gotten so far, like I said earlier I will update this thread as I go but it may be awhile before the next update - depending on the misses and everything else goin on

1965fastback

Nice fab work! Hopefully it will help you get your 60' time down.

jasond393

Here are the plates, mocked up with the aluminum spring bushing...





And here are the plates with the aluminum spring bushing off to the side to get an idea of how this is working. I also took out the 3/4" OD steel sleeve that the spring bushing and these new plates ride on...

valley firearms

I have a set of cal tracs I'm not using since I went with the 4 link. I might of had them on for 6 months and very little miles. I will ship them to the lower 48 for $275 if anyone is interested.

flyingfool

looks nice... that will be quite satisfiying to have those on and working! oh, and whered did you get that aluminum bushing? was it just a large aluminum rod that you bored out?

jasond393

Thanks for the compliment. The aluminum bushings were from competition engineering. I had trouble trying to find the solid bushings for the mustang springs so I called them up and asked to purchase these that usually come with their "SLIDE-A-LINK" kit, which is a cal-trac knock off. Works basically the same, just has some bushings built into it for the more street crowd. I don't remember how much I paid for them, its been awhile.

jasond393

I got a little more done on the traction bars. I finally removed my springs and replaced the front rubber bushings with the aluminum bushings. At the same time I mounted the front spring plates with the spacers and the hiem joints.





Ignore the over spray on the springs :P