Just a few clarifications on our stuff, and a opinion or two on the other arguments.
The DSE quadralink, and the Lateral Dynamics 3-Link setup have a few things in common, but not too much. Both require modifications to the trunk area to locate the shocks, both require intrusion to the rear seat area to locate the forward link(s), and both use coil-over shocks in place of the leaf springs. BOTH will allow the use of a modified rear seat, but don't expect to just drop your stock rear seat in either case. Beyond that, the comparisons pretty much end. The price on our kit is quite a bit higher than the DSE setup, but the two kits are nowhere near the same in terms of what you get, compare them and you will see.
It's true the we entertained participating on Mark's Project X, but at that time, we could not say for certain that we could run tailpipes on the car, we were 95% certain, and I could have lied to him, but that's not how we do things. Mark is a great guy and very sharp, moreso than folks probably even realize, and I don't fault his decision to go with what he knew. In fact, it was critically important for us, we went back and changed the design a little to insure, with 100% certainty, that we could run tailpipes, so in the end I thank him for not choosing us: we might not have been so motivated to wring out the design a bit more. At this point, we can run up to 4" tailpipes on our system, the attached photo shows a customer car running 2.5" tubes, there is plenty of room for far larger, and no, these are not mandrel bent tubes, there is plenty of room regardless. Funny, when I asked Mark how he fit the tailpipes on the Mule, he noted that he had to notch the gas tank. Turns out, you don't need to do that with our setup, we didn't exactly expect that, but this car is running a stock style tank, it's a stainless repop from Classic Industries. If you run mini-tubs, with leafs, don't forget to factor in the cost of a new narrowed gas tank, or plan on doing the work yourself. I believe the same to be true with the Quadra Link (i.e. needs to be notched) but this only second hand from people that have seen the setup installed on a car, I haven't personally so I could be wrong. Granted, 4" pipes might not fit with a stock tank, but if you need 4" pipes, you'd better be running a full cage, with a "real" fuel cell, or you should seek mental help right away.
Our setup is adjustable. By design. The majority of the folks that will run our setup won't ever use this, but there are a darned good number of folks that will. And by adjustable, I mean more than just tuning the ride height, or spring rate. With changes in ride height comes changes in aspects such as anti-squat, roll steer, roll center height. Want to tune it for a special setup? You can. Don't need to? No sweat there either. It's not terribly important for most folks that are running the typical hot rod, and that's completely fine in our book. But, it is important to us, CRITICALLY important. Please don't use the "well, I shouldn't need to adjust the system, I just want to bolt it on and it should be perfect" argument, it's not valid. Do you tune your carb? Adjust the ignition timing? There are folks out there making careers out of tuning the newer awesome fuel injection systems. Why? Because they have the tools and knowledge to do so. Some folks will just want a "chip" to plug into their setup and will be fine with that. We can do the same by guiding you to an excellent baseline on our setup. Other folks want the software to tune every little aspect of the system, and we have this same analogy with our gear too. Better to have it and not need it, then to need it and not have it.
We use tubular steel, fixture welded crossmembers to react the high loads associated with the setup. We weld our own housings, because there are few folks that we trust to do it correctly, we have seen far more "bad" work done on cars than we have good, or even acceptable. Some folks can handle it given the right tools and knowledge, most folks can't (here's a hint: metal warps when you apply a lot of heat to it, such as with welding).
Let's face it, no one NEEDS all of the go fast stuff we put on our cars, we WANT it. We don't just set our cars up for the best performance, we set them up the way each of us wants. Playing on Steveo's blah blah blah comment on the RTH2 event, his paddle shifter most likely didn't make the car go any faster, so why bother running one and spending the extra money? 'cause it's cool. There's a lot to these decisions, not the least of which is brand loyalty. DSE has some fiercly loyal followers, Lateral Dynamics does too (we're just five years behind in terms of being in business, so there's a lot fewer!!). On one hand, it's a pain for the new consumer to sort through it all, on the other hand, choice is never a bad thing. Whatever you decide, have a great time with it, this hobby is a blast and everyone should not forget to have as much fun with it as possible.
Cheers,
Mark
P.S. And yes, 335's can and usually do hurt the balance due to the confines of the front/tire sizes, but who cares on the "street," they look WAY too cool not to run them if possible!!! Attached is a pic of a second gen mocked up with meats, baby.
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