The leafs are fine for now, but the four link or torque arm is next, with the tubs. But the front tracks nice and genuinely feels like a "newer" car, kinda like a 5th gen vette, the front anyways....

That's great Mike. :thumbsup:

Sounds good. I've not heard of anyone having performance leafs and not having a jarring ride. Maybe I will build in stages and find out for myself as I'm more than willing to be shown other wise. That and I'm just not ready to replace my rearend yet since it's got everything I need already there. We will see. Thanks for the feed back. Hurry up with the pictures already though :mock:

sometimes you just don't know the differences till you try them both.

My thoughts as well. Though I do have a lot of experience driving 4th gens and c4/5 vettes. I may be biased from the get go but I'll give it a shot I think. I can always sell the leafs off later on when all my dividend investing makes me rich :D

I'm taking this same attitude towards building the LT up also. Keep the initial build simple but on a solid foundation. Upgrade from there if I think it'll be worth it. If not, in goes a stroker 6 liter. Learn a lot along the way and have fun doing so. Hopefully.

You are hanging out with the wrong bunch then! A multi link rear suspension costs about 7-10 times more than a good rear leafspring set up, once you factor in the well I may as well mini tub, and so on.....

We have steel leafs and composite leafs to suit any performance or comfort situation. The limiting factor with leafs is really the amount of tire you can put under them. Most of the multi link rear suspension systems out on the market are flawed in some way due to the impossible packaging under the car.

Also, generally speaking the shock valving has more to do with a rough ride than does the spring rate. Mikes car has what would be considered a pretty stiff spring rate, but rides sweet because the great valving on the double adjustable AFCO coilovers he's got. It's all in the combo!

One option, as Vince can appreciate is to modify a set of headers, VS building a custom set. Some headers lend themselves well to this.

Well after smashing several set of headers, trying to find better ones, and offering to help manufacturers re-design there headers for better ground clearance, we decided to take matters into our own hands! We had a set of Hooker Super Comp headers that fit pretty well, with near equal length primaries and 1.75" tubes. The aweful Hooker ceramic coating had gone to sh*t in less than 2 years,the "Hooker" badge had fallen off, and the bottoms were now a bit flat, so we had nothing to lose. We were able to section about 3/4 out of each tube to move the collector up approx 3/4". Our goal is to get the car about 1/4" lower in ride height, and gain a little more ground clearance. For now all the tubes are fit and ready to be TIG welded, but for now they are just tacked together to test fit. We will be doing a new custom stainless exhaust to snake around our new torque arm rear suspension, trying to fit a true X pipe in about 10" of space, wish me luck!

marking the tubes
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...54520524_n.jpg

fitting everything back, and aligning the sections
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...28/photo32.jpg

both sides tacked together
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h2...28/photo31.jpg

Lookin good Keith! that' should do the trick. I scraped mine twice on the freeway doin a cool 70 on my way back from Laguna two weekends ago. Todd sent me a box (thursday i believe) so i will be playing with it as time permits over the next couple of months or a hole in the headers, whichever comes first i believe.

Ordered the rest of the roll bar from CA this week, so next week it will be "cutting sheet metal thirty" in my garage. Dry fit, then have Kyle the welder do his magic. Hopefully that will be done before T-Hill on May 3rd.

Fixed the latch.

Drove it 325 miles so far since Keith has done the front end and i must say all is well with the suspenders and steering!

Now for more power, cause baking them through 2nd gear isn't enough LOL

there you go!
Before you put them on for good, ship em out to Doug's to be put into production.
have fun tig welding 4 & 6 LOL
need to put the "baking" energy into forward movement brother

more hook = go faster :)

Glad you're enjoying the ride, Mike. Funny you should mention headers. I was just laying under mine today thinking about how I want to run the exhaust because I'm not interested in scrapping headers at 70. Making my own is still the route I intend to take. Hopefully, Todd/Holley can get the issues resolved and offer a great fitting header.