In the earlier days of street rodding there was typically a broad gap between looking cool and riding smooth. Many rodders built their pre-’49 hot rods to look slick first with little concern for the ride quality of the car or truck. After all, if your car looks cool, what does it matter if there’s a few stiff bounces and maybe even a little bump steer?
A compilation of chassis tech articles from the leading street rodding magazine. Features designing and how-to procedures on building the chassis and suspension for all types of street rods. Find great deals for HP Books Street Rodder's Chassis & Suspension Handbook HP1346. Shop with confidence on eBay!
Those uncomfortable driving days are long behind us thanks to the innovation and engineering of a number of manufacturers dedicated to producing the components that help us build safe, balanced, and smooth-handling street rods. Today you have your choice of individual components that will fit your budget when the time comes or selecting a complete suspension kit or package for your specific application. Looking to keep with a traditional solid axle with a better ride and the consistency of disc brakes? How about a complete independent rear suspension system that can still support 750 horsepower? This is all possible with the number of different suspension kits and components available today.
You can surf street rod suspensions all day long on the web, but the best place to get the straight scoop is to cruise through the vendor area during a Goodguys event. That’s where you can go one-on-one with an expert and discuss the options for your specific application. If you can’t make it out to a show any time soon, we gathered some great examples of suspension systems for ’48-and-older cars and trucks to help you with your research. Bolt-in Foundation If you’re looking for a solid start to putting IFS into your ’35-’40 Ford car or ’35-’41 pickup, head over to Speedway Motors. For those of you looking to do the work yourself, this Speedway front end upgrade is designed to bolt-in place with no welding required! A few hand tools and a powerful drill motor will do the trick.
Chassis And Suspension Guide Street Rodder Magazine
This bolt-in crossmember kit delivers the foundation you need to upgrade to rack and pinion steering that is a based on a Mustang-II-style independent front suspension. The Speedway kit is supplied with a trick bolt-in crossmember assembly, plus a frame brace and boxing plates to strengthen the factory frame. Speedway also includes the spring towers with adjusters and all the hardware needed to bolt the new crossemember assembly in place. Once complete, the ride height will be about 3-4-inches lower than stock.
Linked-In With IRS Not only does the unique design of the Art Morrison Enterprises Multilink IRS produce a significant advantage in comfort and performance over solid-axle designs, it just looks bitchin. AME now offers its trick IRS in four different track widths (from 55.5- to 61.5-inches) making it available for everything from early Mustangs to mid-’60s Cadillacs. The carefully engineered cradle design of the AME IRS allows it to be easily installed into unibody and existing chassis projects by welding four brackets to the frame and then bolting the suspension to those brackets.
The low-profile design allows for an under-the-stock-floor location on most of the vehicles while the suspension cradle provides an extra level of noise and vibration dampening. Check out for details. Dropping With Uprights In the rodding world, there’s a long list of cars that came from the factory with independent front suspensions that will still work well today – when properly rebuilt.
Popular applications include ’39-’54 Chevys, ’37-’57 B-O-P, ’49-’64 Fords and Mercs, first-gen Corvettes, and most ’34-’56 Mopars. Fatman Fabrication understands how to not only rebuild these vintage systems, but they know how to make them better with their line of Dropped Uprights. Fatman’s uprights will drop the front end 2.5-inches to give your car a better stance and are also designed to improve the handling and ride. To complement the shave and a haircut with their new uprights, Fatman also offers a complete line of steering and disc brake upgrades.
RT530E Basic Machine. WEIGHT REDUCTIONS FOR. LOAD HANDLING DEVICES. Refer to LM manual for operating instructions. Rt530e service manual.
Click over to for the low down. I Beamed For more than 40 years, Pete & Jake’s has been the premier hot rod manufacturer of suspension and chassis components, not to mention complete chassis.