Rear shock crossmember. What would you do?

[BBC71Nova]

I currently have a CA G-Link setup installed in my build. I like the setup but there are couple small issues that I have that I need to resolve. They are:

- At full bump the Fab9 filler cap just touches the crossmember. CA does have a fix for this and it involves a modified crossmember. It seems to only impact the Fab 9 setup as well. Mention that to not discourage anyone considering the G-link.

- I want full 3" exhaust ran out the back of the car. The shock crossmember takes up valuable space between the housing and the trunk pan leaving too little clearance. Note I think the design of the Fab 9 does contribute to this some as well. Some have suggested going below the housing but I have the splined swaybar so that pretty much rules that option out as well.

Here is a pic showing the out of the box mounting on Joe's (frojoe) car.


So, what to do? Raise or remove the crossmember I think. Frojoe raised his crossmember by modding the G-Link crossmember brackets. Doing that you can move the crossmember up ~1.5" or so. Basically take the crossmember brackets up flush with the top of the rails. However it also requires you to mod the trunk pan and create a filler panel.

I had been considering the same and once I saw Joe pull it off I had the confidence to try it. Almost... Off I went to fab up some new brackets to raise the mounting location. Here are the brackets I have made. They are long because I'll contour them to the rails once I cutout the old ones. In order to leave enough "meat" where they wrap around teh bottom of the rails I relocated the set of shock holes .5" to the inside. I will also have to rebuild the bolt-in bar so that it is shorter.



So that's all good until it hit me that if I'm gonna have to mod the trunk pan anyway, why not just install a DSE crossmember like you'd use with a QuadraLink? That would yield even more clearance, increase distances to where I could running a longer travel shock (not really necessary I dont think but...), and should I ever decide to go to a QuadraLink I wouldn't have to do visible fab to the completed car.

Anybody think of a reason why going with the DSE style crossmember would be a bad idea?