Lateral-g Forums - Hello all

Good evening from southern Maine. I'm a go-fast enthusiast and a diehard GM man. I'm a journeyman machinist for the DoD. I grew up on and around heavy equipment and big trucks.

My current vehicles are a 2007 3500 express 15 passenger van (I run a van pool to work), 2006 GMC 2500 HD Duramax roughly 525whp, a 2000 GMC 1500 sbrc 4.3 5speed, and the reason I'm really here is my project vehicle. A 1988 Chevy S10 short bed regular cab. I bought it with a 350/Muncie m20 already in it. The problem is the engine blew and when I tore it apart my wheels started turning and now I want to build it into more of a pro-touring truck. I realize this isn't a truck forum but I came across Ron Sutton's suspension tuning discussions and found it to be the most useful information I've seen. The s10 had a lot of interchangeable parts with the g-bodys, so I figure what you guys are doing to make the front end/rear end/overall handling better surly applies to what I'm trying to do.

The current plan is a new v8, 355ci fully forged/light weight bottom end (friend of mine running circle tracks is helping me) haven't purchased a good set of heads yet but do have a victor jr and a worked over holley 650 racing carb to top it off,

Going to stick with the Muncie 4speed for the fun factor, clutch is going to be a lightweight used triple disk my buddy has kicking around, most likely will hate trying to drive that on the street, fortunately I live in rural Maine and can avoid traffic.

Body wise I am going to try to keep an overall stock look, Ill put a cowl hood on if I cant get the air filter under the stock one. I want to re-locate the battery to the back as well as put a fuel cell to the back.

Front suspension..... not sure how crazy I'm going to go, no matter what I do it's still going to be a truck... would like to build something high travel/low roll since nothing else about the truck is going to be street friendly why start now. Including running wide 5 hubs

rear suspension will be a four link with panhard bar. although I haven't read the "rear suspension tuning guide" yet

I have a ford 9" that currently I plan on building into a full floater and running wide 5 hubs.

The attraction to the wide 5 hubs to me is there are a lot of good, used, relatively inexpensive parts out there, they will lighten the truck and they have huge brakes. The only con I really see is the selection of wheels is pretty limited other than 15" I can get any backspace in 1/4" increments. the other issue is that the seem like the scrub radius will be less then optimal. On the other hand I love the way they look.

Once again Hello and look forward to being part of the conversation. I'm here mostly to learn, but hopefully sooner or later I can be helpful to others.