RideTech 33 Ford

[bret]

As for the Woodward rack installation...its not for the meek. Woodward make the best racks in the business, bar none, BUT it is a racecar part and needs above average talent and resources to install correctly. You cannot order a rack for a 69 Camaro [or any other specific application]...their components are manufactured and sold by dimensional data.
On the 33 Ford we made the decision early on [after we discovered the inadequecies of the oem rack system] to do whatever it took to do this steering system right. This meant basically sawing off the front of the car and starting over. After the radiator and grille shell were out of the way, things cleared up nicely. Removal of a few more brackets and tubing cleared a path for proper placement. To determine proper placement we modeled the frontend digitally nad ran the data through our suspension analyzer program. This told us exactly where the rack needed to be in every axis. We fabricated the neccessary mounts to put it there, ran the suspension through it's travel, and determined that there was less than .015" of bumpsteer through 6" of suspension travel. Winner!
This also meant fabricating a set of custom steering arms to get the ackerman and bumpsteer optimized. Not a huge deal if you have a CAD guy 25 ft away and a CNC mill in between the two of you.



Is it worth it? Obviously, because the alternative is that I have an expensive paperweight. [That would be a car that you can't steer]

I point all this out not to explain how smart we are [we're not...if we were, we would have identified and fixed this problem months ago] but to demonstrate that sometimes hotrodding takes a little perserverence, a little money, a little talent, a lot of help from your knowledgable friends. Something to consider when you have to round the corner on a bracket or enlarge a bolt hole to get some aftermarket part bolted on your Camaro.

Will we make it to Nashville Goodguys this weekend? I think so.