Thoughts on rear coil overs

Since I called in sick to work tonight I've been thinking of my rear suspension. It looks like the shock mounting to the body can be removed by a half dozen spot welds. If those set removed it looks like your basic kit can be used with minor fab work. Anybody else look into this

 

Is there enough room in the kick up? That seems to be the issue , the area overall is too small for much to fit in there...

 

I dont know if a cradle will fit, but there looks to be room for the c/o crossmember.

 

it should fit.
do you plan on staying with leaf springs? some link type suspension along with it.

 

No leafs, they will need some thing to restrict front/back movement.

 

does look like a lot of room without...gas tank, rear end housing, exhaust system and shocks.

 

I can tell you this, those frame rails are welded sheetmetal pieces not heavy-gauge tubing. Since the weight of the rear half of of the car will now be concentrated on that bar, along with any "transfer" weight under acceleration, you'll need to reinforce that area with plate to spread the load.

 

What's the point with coilovers?

 

I had to make up and weld in full frame covers for the insides of both of my rear frame rails plus short covers for the outside due to pitting and some slight corrosion issues. So what I did was to drill a 1 1/2 inch hole through both rails and mount my upper coil over cross member tubing straight through the rails and covers. I haven't welded everything in yet because the rear end and coil overs still need a little tweaking. I might need to rotate that upper cross member so the top coil mounts still might have to roll up towards the front. My adjustable coil over rear end mounts came from Chris Alston and my upper mounts are from A & A Manufacturing

 

Are you goong to have a 4 link setup or just the bottom bars. Do you have photos from the front? If so can you post some.

 

If you look at the photos you can see the top links

 

The kit that is shown is what is in my car.Previous owner ran it for a pretty good while,I see no evidence of frame cracking or any metal buckling anywhere.However 2 roll bars inside the car coming into the trunk that are welded to the main hoop behind the drivers seat are welded to the frame right above the top bar that the shocks bolt to.Most of the time,those 2 bars go all the way to the bumper,but I guess Texas Thunder Chassis decided not to set it up that way.It has Morroso 3 way adjustable mono shocks installed,previous owner said this worked really well,as the car has leaf springs w/ cal-traks.I`ve been reading a lot on chassis set ups & talking to people at the track,w/ leaf springs no one recommends using coil overs because it makes the rear to stiff.

 

you could just use one leaf spring to locate the rear end and then use a light spring on the coil over to be able have weight jacking adjustablity.