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161 Posts
Just thought I'd give you guys some idea of what you might be up against if you decide to fit cal tracs and monos to a car that already has the springs inboard. I made my own spring boxes when I inboarded the super stock springs I had on the Dart for the last few years. I didn't want to cut the frame more than I had to so the boxes were just tall enough to fit the front spring eye on the super stock springs. The mono front eye is considerably larger in diameter and was too tall and also too wide to fit in. The rear eye is also huge compared to the chrysler spring and was too tall to fit in the sliders that I wanted to fit at the same time. I had the rear of the spring re rolled to mopar size to take the bush that came with the sliders, and the front eye redone to fit the bush I took from the rear eye. I had to carefully grind the edges of the spring at the front eye and narrow the bushes slightly to get the spring into the box. I had to re drill the box for the larger 5/8" bolts that Cal tacs use on the front eye. With a solid from spring eye bush the spring would no longer line up with the spring perch on the axle and given that I'd already had to shim it to get the pinion angle right previously, cutting them off and starting again seems like the best option. When I got it mocked up enough to sit the car back on it's wheels I found it sat 1" lower than with the super stocks which doesn't work for me. Springs are currently back at the forge again getting a bit more arch put in them to correct that. The Rancho shocks that are recommended for this set up are considerably larger diameter than the Comp Engineering 50/50's I was using before and would not clear the back brace on the axle, not helped by the fact the axle is moved back 3/4" from stock. Best fix for that appears to be turning the bottom plates around and fit the shocks in front of the axle, meaning I have to make a new crossmember to fit the shocks at the top. So that's where I am at this point, a killer deal on a used cal trac set up that I thought would take an afternoon to fit has taken 3 weeks so far and I'm still throwing money and effort into it, it had better be worth it when I finally get it finished......