Thread: mild dragster alterd rear susp

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The most simple setup, and one that works pretty well is the tried and true tube front axle. I know there are some advantages to coilovers, but for pure building simplicity, the old crossover spring has steered a million drag cars down the quarter.

I think a car set up like the one in this picture, even with a semi mild BBC should at least crack into the 10's. At the very worst low 11's.

If you want to get excited about the altered you are thinking about building, click on here and turn up the speakers. I posted this a while back, found this on youtube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC8OmisBikg


Don

Here is a picture of the altered in the video. My understanding is that he built it as a lowbuck project, and it runs 10:40's.


Don

Drag racers don't use the VW front because it's F-U-G-L-Y and they don't like being ridiculed by their fellow racers. If you can get by that part of it, I don't see any reason not to use one. I've seen lots of V-dubs go skyward and back down with no ill effects and then go on to run 10's. We used to have a Bug-In every year at Firebird.

Al, maybe I can help you out a little in the nomenclature department. A street roadster is a car where the driver sits in the conventional position in the car. An altered puts the driver in the middle of the car.

The two altereds that Don posted are using Funny Car cages.

thanks for the vw advice tech, the fuglyness of it is what its all about plus they are such a neat self contained unit. the one i have is in such good shape
my bro and i have had a long talk re rules and what we are looking at. we are going to use one of the old original bucket bodies we have on hand, vw front end ,a small rad and ford 9 inch rear. make a set of zoomies for it (we got to do that!!!)
we will either budget rebuild the 454 i have on hand or try to find a good running stock 455 olds and 400 tranny from a doner car(ive always liked the 455 and think there a nice low rpm high torque motor)
i think i am right that if we are running less than 11s that we would only require a rollbar,if not we would have to build a cage. if we end up running in the 11s line then we would cage it as it would be the kind of chassy one would be able to access to improve the rollover protection.
what we have decided was to start with the plan on running slower than 11s and build up from there. get a nice solid running chassis see how things work and either improve or tweak from there on in.
this would not be a screamer but more of a torquer, like my caddy bucket let the tranny shift at that mid 4500 rpm area and run a stock rear gear 3.30 or 3.55 whatever we find in the doner rear.
were not out to beat anyone or even be superpro just have some fun.
i told my brother i would even put a cranked 6 cyl in line chevy it it and run against the big v8 cars for fun.

Sorry Al, but with an open car, you will need a full cage, funny cage or altered cage no matter the e.t. A bar will only work in a closed car.

Call up SFI and spend $35.00 for the complete spec and plan on Spec #10.3, Altered cage 7.50 and slower. Here's the link with their phone number.

Build it right in the first place so that it will be saleable later when you tire of it. I really, really like the idea of a six banger. Then you could hang the six motorcycle carbs on foot-long tubes on the side like we talked about in another thread.

http://www.sfifoundation.com/drag.html

I ran an altered car for five or six years. We ran a solid mounted tube front axle and a solid mounted rear axle. Simple, cheap and effective. When we got the car, it had springs and shocks on both ends, and it ran about as straight as a bug on a hotplate. I cut all that junk off, solid mounted both ends, cranked in about 15-20 degrees of caster on the front, and it went straight as an arrow - at least if you didn't hang laundry in a 40 mph crosswind . We ran supercomp on alcohol, with an injected 355 SBC, but had trouble keeping from breaking out. No electronic boxes.

we were wondering about that on what kind of rollover setup one would need in it. the tech book seemed a little fuzzy on that . It wouldnt be too much harder to do when one is starting from scratch. i suggested we take the bucket body and narrow it a bit and design it so it can be removed to work on the chassis.
thanks for the link,have you ver seen one of their plans,is it pretty easy to follow, i do actually wish we had a local alterd around here one could use for a patternamd actually see how to set it up.

Yep, easy to do. If you need help in the middle of it, call or email your NHRA rep. Name and number in the front of the Rulebook.

Oh and Al, I don't mean to sound like a know-it-all. It's just that I've seen guys build cars over the last 50 years of doing this that would not be saleable because they don't meet the specs and nobody will buy them. They end up rusting away beside the garage somewhere. What a shame.

Not only that, but some of these cars never made it down the track in the first place because they wouldn't pass tech. I'm not sayin' that your car has to certify or be all fancy, but if it is built right it will pass tech and whoever is drivin' it will be safe.

no offence taken tech, this is a learning thing and we dont have any guys running anything like i am proposing here. the only guy that has anything close is a ford anglia but as its a full body he is running a straight full cage.