My Cuda Project Part II...now at Bruning Auto Design

[DRJDVM's '69]

This is the "before" stock Air Ride set-up before we altered anything..


I had Paul Horton at www.welderseries.com make me some new LCA brackets that no only got rid of the u-bolts, but allowed me to drop the axle LCA mount point so that it was about 1 degree down in the back ( the pix is with the car at full extended height, so that's not the angle at ride height...)....plus add some holes for adjustments. I had Leonard over at Dominator Street Rods weld on the brackets for me




All this was after messing with the pinion/working angles for weeks and weeks. Once I got that where I wanted, I had the axle brackets welded on for good. Then I ordered up a driveshaft from www.driveshaftshop.com. I had them build one with the front CV joint...that way I have more flexibility with the front working angle...I just need to work with the rear working angle


Its rated to over 800 HP, so I'm not worried about it breaking anytime soon...

[DRJDVM's '69]

Now that the rear suspension was finalized I could finally build the trans tunnel. I mocked together a temporary driveshaft while I was messing with the pinion...that way I could also see how much height I needed to add with the car fully dumped etc.




The whole trans tunnel was made by hand....I don't have a slip roller etc, so it was bent over my MIG gas tank, my knee and anything else I could find....not dead on symmetrical, but it will do..

[DRJDVM's '69]

While at JCG Cris cut and rotated the Ride Tech gas filler, so then I just had to modify the trunk lock bracket and the hole in the trunk floor to get it all dialed in and fit so I can take it in/out. I tightened up the gasket gap alittle more after this pix...it air tight now



I also wanted to have some firewall to frame support but didn't want some big bulky bars in the engine bay, so I had Cris make some that run in the fenderwells...in the e body there is a ton of space in there......the ones he mocked up for me to finnish didn't really work so I made some new ones from scratch. They just barely clear with the car fully dumped I also made some bracket and gussets to the fenderwell and firewall. They also give me some nice spots to attach my AC lines, wires, air intake bracket etc etc

[DRJDVM's '69]

Fuel lines and mount for the regulator was next. I wanted to run the reg in back and have a short return line. There is not a ton of room back there, so I elected to mount it to the tank itself. I used the Pegasus Racing PTFE lines and fittings....damn that stuff is expensive !!
I am alittle concerned about how close the tank is to the diff.....I had to take the big Moser cover off and use a standard stamped cover. Everything clears but if I ever get rear ended, the diff is going to hit the tank pretty quick. The pix make it look closer than it ..there's a good 1.5 inch between the closest piece and the diff throughout the range of motion. I made a heat shield between the reg and exhaust too.

[DRJDVM's '69]

I had to make some room for the diff pumpkin in the trunk so I made it high enough I could run some lines etc up in the pocket. It worked out perfect to mount up my Finch vent system in the trunk and run my diff vent and fuel tank vent up there. Plenty of clearance even with the car dumped.


I wasn't 100% satisfied with the exhaust Rob and I built....the tailpipe angle to the lower valance was not quite right and the tips didn't line up square..so I re-did the tailpipes to get the angle right and get allitle more clearance to the air bags..and added another v-band clamp to make the pieces smaller


After seeing some of the issue with the frame cracking when the G-link etc was welded to the frame instead of bolted in, I got freaked out since I fully welded in my AirBar. So I made some plates to mount to the outside of the frame, and drilled 2 holes through the plate and the bracket on the inside of the frame. I'm going to run 2 through frame bolts to help spread the load on the frame and act as a safety factor just in case the frame cracks or tears.. probably paranoid, but I can sleep better knowing its beefed up alittle more


last of the rust repair....I cut these pieces out when I had the car blasted and never got around to filling them back in.. until now...

[DRJDVM's '69]

The car has been in bare metal for quite awhile now.... when I had it blasted I did epoxy it but with all the metal work 80% of the original epoxy is gone. So now that I'm finally winding down on the big metal work, I need to get it back in epoxy. So I prepped and shot the doors, front fenders and trunk lid.


So that's where it stands right now for the most part.

Right now I put the car back on the rotisserie and am going over all the welds and doing final grinding/dressing etc. I'm going to have Dominator weld on my brackets for the rear UCA front mounts (any high stress areas, I'm having the pros weld on...don't trust my own enough)....then I'm going to take it back to the blaster and have them "touch it up" by blasting all the underside, floor and any spots really difficult to get to (seams, welds etc) and then get it back into epoxy.

Then mock it all up again, and start my hard lines for brakes, fuel, brakes etc

[DRJDVM's '69]

hey Marty

The rear UCA ?...no its the same length....maybe a turn or two different. I tried to run it in the middle of its threads to give me as much adjustment longer/shorter as possible. Other than that, its the same length as it comes form Ride Tech

[96z28ss]

Originally Posted by DRJDVM's '69

I wasn't 100% satisfied with the exhaust Rob and I built....the tailpipe angle to the lower valance was not quite right and the tips didn't line up square..so I re-did the tailpipes to get the angle right and get allitle more clearance to the air bags..and added another v-band clamp to make the pieces smaller

Not sure that is going to acomplish what you want. I may be wrong here, but you have the exhaust mount on the wrong side of the expansion joint.
if you want the tip to always stay in the same location, you want to hard mount the tip centered in the valance and have the expansion joint before it, so that the tip will always stay in place as the exhaust moves around.

[66fury]

Yes,more mopars.

[syborg tt]

Hi Ned

Glad to see your still working on it.

? Did you shorten the upper arm at all