rear suspension debate..

rbohm said:

actually what i am saying is that a leaf spring does an excellent job of locating the rear axle side to side, which means if you use a torque arm with axle housing floating brackets on leaf springs, you dont need a panhard bar or a watts link.

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I won't wade in too deep here since I've never used a t-arm. However in own experiennce my 5 leafs and traction masters alone where never able to keep my rear end locked down solid. I push the limits with tire width on my car so any side to side movement of my rear was easily evident and there was alot of it during normal driving conditions for me. When I added the watts all the issues with lateral rear movement dissappeared.

the 3 link setup is what the camaro used from 82-2002 and it was a very simple but effective setup. the 87 iroc I used to have had the factory "torque arm" that ran from the diff to the tailshaft of the transmission and it would plant those tires and that car left hard! 1.50 60' times with 9" slicks, would totally lift the front wheels off the ground a good 10 inches. The street manners were really good with it as well, especially if you use poly bushings instead of rod ends.
I like the cal-trac bars as well....they are good for leaf spring cars. Would cost you a lot less to do. Depends on how fast you plan on running (mainly how hard you launch). The only holdback is the cal-tracs arent as good for road racing as the 3 link. Thats my opinion anyway, that and .99cents can get you coffee at McDonalds...

3-links are different than torque arms. A torque arm is a special type of 3-link. But in practice a 3-link is used to describe the new mustang rear suspension, not to describe a torque arm.

Im going to the 5 link watts setup LEVY Racing swears buy them on the Cobra Forum Guys that are running them say they hook the rear like never before. We had a three link in our FFR Daytona and it did very well even better with a spool the guys could beleive we was Roadracing with it.It just showed me how poorly our old posi was doing a good torenson or Detriot locker with shure help get the back tires working together.I love driving with the Go pedal

that stuff looks a little heavy for the rear suspension. It looks like you have to run an 8.8" rear end. But looks like they might have it set up right. Some modifications may be required to get the correct geometry setup when installing in a mustang.

They do run 8.8 and 9inch setups at Levy.I talked to Gordon he told me he has a solution for the 9 inch. I like TCP's also.I dont want the linked shocks but that set up looks nice.I think we can build that for a fraction of what ther asking for either setup.