on April 17, 2010, 5:11 pm Daze wrote:

Will I ever remove this set up and go back to OEM equipment?? Probably not, than why make it a bolt on?? Well it’s like this:

First, some day the car will no longer be mine. Hopefully that won't be for another 50-70 years, but the reality is some day I will be dead and gone and the car will hopefully belong to my daughter or one of her kids. With that in mind, even though I love to modify things I try to make all my modifications easily udoable. This way if I change my mind in the future or some future owner wants to do something different they easily can.

Second, Ford did it that way. The IRS Ford designed for the Mustang was built with the idea of it being a dealer added bolt on and even though my install will not be exactly the same, in as many ways as possible I am trying to emulate that original design

Third, and this is a big one, strength. The rear frame rails on a Mustang are way to thin IMHO. If I weld mounting brackets on to the frame that would put a lot of stress on the middle section of the frame, and more specifically on the thin frame walls. I know the weight of the, back half of the car can easily be supported by the leaf spring mounting locations so I want my set up to attach there

Forth, mounting bushings. As you know Jaguar put all the parts in a self contained cage and then used rubber bushings to mount said cage to the car. By using the stock leaf spring mounting locations I can easily use leaf spring bushings to accomplish the same thing. Leaf spring bushings are durable, easy to find, availably in several different materials depending on desired stiffness, and will work well in isolating the mounting frame from the chassis.

Fifth, I like a challenge… enough said
What do you guys think???