golly, they are proud of that kit, lol.


Golly, this is such a hard choice to make. I think the best frame connector I've ever seen from the side-view is the the DS&E system. I've crawled all over their example car at a car show. It looks really nice when it's carefully installed. But their system requires cutting the floor pan. I just completed repairing my floor pans a while back and while they could be put back to stock using the same process that fixed rust and rot, I'm just not ready to whittle into this somewhat stock metal. Besides, Jim would come from kick my butt for damaging the stock (or repaired) metal. I try to make only changes that can be readily restored to factory configuration.

I turned down a car that was on my short list of projects before I bought my junker. That car had connectors hanging way down. He had a long list of racing builds to his engine (with receipts he was proud of). Rust was creeping out of even the door hems. To me, those connectors looked like he drove over a bedspring lost on the highway and it hooked up under the car. I don't know how he got it out of his driveway without scraping. It was so obvious from a hundred feet, it just turned me off. It suggested the car had been heavily beaten. It probably was. It was ripped at the rear quarter window where these beat cars always tear.

But these cars can use some help with the chassis so we don't twist them. For one thing, movement between the unibody and the front clip causes non-driver input at the steering box. The driver has to correct for that in addition to road conditions. It also causes body flex and causes torque steer, even with the 350 engine. So certainly, some chassis help is warranted, even for a street car.

I'm looking for a less obtrusive remedy than large square bedspring tubing hanging below the body. I'm not quite ready to cut up floors I just finished patching either. I'm also wondering if extending the front frame to the rear torque boxes is the best answer for a street car that one wants to appear mosstly unmodified. One might easily enforce the rocker pinch welds with rectangular tubing and even tie them in to each other. Connectors don't keep the car square.

Has anyone tried taking 2x2 or the next size tubings and fabricating connectors that are notched and channeled at the rear floor pans, so the pans don't need cutting? It seems like an easy enough construction if you can cut and weld. I don't mind welding to the front frame or the rear frame. What about using smaller tubing tied to the rocker pinch weld? Has anyone with computer aided mechanical design (finite element analysis) looked at this? I just want less permenant changes than chopping up my floors. I don't mind cutting a connector weld later on if things need to come apart later. That is how metal works. You weld it or cut it. It's back like new. I just don't want to redo floors that were a-okay if or when I wanted to put things back.