1962 F100 unibody drag truck

[Leny Mason]

Hi one thing you might look at is putting the spring shackles on the rear of the spring on the front end it helps the handling, I have no idea what they were thinking putting them on the front of the spring it's like pushing a rope. Leny Mason

[KMcCullah]

Hi Leny- We know something has to be done with the front shackles. Doing a shackle swap like you're suggesting makes sense too. They're some worn out puppies.

We reached a good stopping point last weekend and could use some advice. We mated the 504 to the C6 and dropped it between the frame rails so we can get to work on mounts before we strip it all down for sandblasting. We know keeping engine/trans close to the rear axle helps with traction. Traction is king in most motorsports, right?  As it sits right now we're against the fire wall. But we think we want to be back another 3 inches or so. This would mean a lot of whittling and fabrication on the fire wall. But is another 3 inches going to really be worth all the work?

We also put the stock steering column back in to see how close it would be to the headers. Not too bad at this point. Another 3 inches back would be doable with some creative tube fab. Better than we thought originally.

What do you guys think?

[jayb]

I would say that an additional 3" isn't going to make a big difference.  Probably need to be back 18" to make it worth the trouble of hacking up the firewall.  JMO - Jay

[Leny Mason]

I am with Jay, when you move the engine under the firewall every thing gets harder, I work on the new trucks were the engine is under the windshield that makes everything harder, I vote better tires  the body on these flex vary little so traction is good anyway. Leny Mason

[Heo]

Its better to move other heavy things to the rear. On a Mustang
moving the battery to the trunk is like moving the engine 6 inch

[KMcCullah]

We suspected as much. Moving the engine/trans package back 3" is probably not worth the labor. And without a way to weigh the thing to prove it, we better just keep it simple for now. The fuel cell and battery are already going in back. So they should help.

The current A/GAS rules for Dragweek allow the center of the intake to be as far back as the bottom windshield frame. That would move the engine/trans package back another 20" or so. Which would be great, but if/when we drop a 8-71 blower on top, it would be a huge undertaking. But probably necessary with 1200+HP. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Thanks for the input guys. 

[Leny Mason]

Hi, an eight seventy one is the way to go, there is only about ten pounds difference between a six  seventy one, go big and hang on. Leny Mason

[machoneman]

Yeah, skip the 3" move as it would not do much. Had a chassis/wheelbase formula I played with long ago but damned if I can find it now. Now that 18" to 20" move would make a difference as others noted.   

[KMcCullah]

Well....it took a while, but the engine and transmission is finally mounted in the frame. Not much to look at really. The plates that are bolted to the block were originally motor mount adaptors for an early 2 bolt block. That's the reason for the flat head screws. Motor mounts used to bolt to the plates. We're trying to decide if we need to connect the motor mount tubes for rigidity. As it is right now there's a crossmember 8" in front of the harmonic balancer and another one directly under the C6 bellhousing. It's a pretty stiff structure as is. What do you guys think?

[Leny Mason]

Hi, If it was me I would bring a brace from the frame to the the motor mount , to keep it from moving back and forth if you want to email me I can send you pictures of what We did on my Comet motor mounts. Leny Mason

[KMcCullah]

Hey Leny-- I saw your fabricated motor mounst on your Comet build thread. Now those are some snazzy mounts! We wont have such finery on our chassis. Probably just use a chain and turnbuckle to the front of the head. Gotta dig that hard core chain look. 

[KMcCullah]

We've made some progress lately. The body was lifted off the frame so we could work on setting up the chassis for haulin ass instead of hay. The plan is to get as much fab work completed as possible and then sand blast and paint the rolling chassis. Over the last few weeks dad has implemented some of his 60's hotrod trickery. He has built ladder bars from some mid 60's Chevy truck rear end locator H beams. Hell I don't know the technical term for them. But those trucks had coil springs in the rear so those beams had to be pretty stiff. These particular beams were off of a 3/4 ton so it had some extra plates riveted to the axle mounting spot. Dad ended up cutting those off. The plan is to leave them unattached until ride height and pinion angle is established. And then weld the end of the H beams to the axle housing. The rear axle housing by the way is an early style big bearing housing. The backing plates have 1/2 inch bolts. The tubes are 1/4 wall. Dad's had Mark Williams himself on the horn recently for some axle dimension clarifications. Along with axles dad also ordered a bunch of other goodies. 1350 yokes, spool etc. It should be a fairly stout rear end. Will post a pic when it's done. He also rebuilt the spring packs and left all the overload/helper springs out. 4 total removed. Its a nice limber pack now. We plan to go completely thru the drum brakes and use them until we can upgrade to disks. The drums and shoes looked nearly new. Maybe a .010 step in the drums.

[KMcCullah]

 We have changed a few things on the front end too. Since we won't be articulating thru hay fields  with this rig, I started out with shortening up the shock towers about 4". Getting the rivets out was a bitch! I plug welded thru the rivet holes when I welded the towers back on. I also cleaned up the ends of the front cross member. The center of the cross member was hacked up when the straight 6 was adapted to the frame. I patched the holes up and smoothed everything over. I rewelded some of the more sketchy looking factory welds too. Dad made some 2" riser blocks and had some new U bolts made. He also rebuilt the spring packs and put new bushings in. We talked ourselves out of relocating the shackles since we're keeping the stock steering sector and drag link. We punched 13 holes in the axle webbing also. That damned web is 1/2" thick! Oh...and the H beam ladder bars have 13 holes too. Yep we're badasses.    Or at least dad is.

[KMcCullah]

Progress has been creeping along. We've had the rear end in-and-out several times. The way we did the H-beams was not at all forgiving so it did take some time to get it right. Dad fabbed the truss out of a 2X4 rectangle tube. It should stiffen up the early truck axle housing pretty well.

[KMcCullah]

Last weekend we started on a set of headers. These are going to be equal length, stepped headers. 1 7/8" 2" 2 1/8" Just regular steel. We don't have the budget for stainless. The exhaust side of our Pro-Port heads have Jeff Colverts' exhaust port. So they look a little different than the usual FE head. Blair just happened to have a set of header flanges hanging around for the Colvert exhaust ports so we scooped em' up. He also sent us a sweet pair of merge collectors for the project. They're set up for pan evacs already. (Which reminds me, Jay. I need to change the valve cover configuration that I originally spec'd. Will email you soon.)
  Check out the milled register in the header flanges. It took us a minute to figure out a method to fit the 1 7/8 tubes to the flanges. Another round peg in a square hole scenario. Normal for us. We heated the tube to a dull red and squeezed it in the vise. And then with the tube still in the vise, squeezed it square with a C clamp. 16ga tubing was the better choice for fitting into the flanges but the majority of the straight tubing will be 18ga. Mandrel bends I found on ePay. They're 16ga. I found non-aluminized 10' sticks of 18ga tubing at our local NAPA. Bare steel is by far the better choice to tig than aluminized. The tubes all slide together also. This feature will be a big time saver over the course of the project.