 I’m using a Wilwood balance bar, so seeing the brake pressure bias on the Auto Meter Ultra Lites helped me tune it correctly—no guesswork. 1 Off Rides’ Willie Fonseca and Tony made this cool console with the iPod Nano head unit. |
Attn: John Parsons
Now is when the story gets a little tricky. It was mid-2002, and more than two years had gone by since I had started. Morrison had fitted their frame with their best street suspension (at that time; since then they have added some killer stuff) for me, but over the couple of years, I had started to get some education on what a high end suspension might be. The original stuff (Mustang II spindles in front, 4 bar in back) was better than OEM, but it wasn’t suited for 140 mph on the backstretch at Road Atlanta. And to cement the deal, soon-to-be friend Katz Tsubai posted a thread on the Pro-Touring message board entitled Attn: John Parsons. Like some sort of automotive Alice, I opened that thread and followed the white rabbit.
Working from the Morrison frame, Katz designed completely new front and rear suspensions for the car. He provided engineering drawings for all the parts, welding jigs, and gave me numbers to follow up on stress point and failure analysis. I could do all the welding but I didn’t have the equipment to make things like a rack mount, threaded bosses, and billet aluminum uprights. So I asked Brian Schein (who had bought my original welder) if he’d like to join our little group in Wonderland. Others helped (John Ulaszek, David Pozzi, Tony Woodward, Glenn Estelle, Rick Klein, and more), but over the next 24 months Brian, Katz, and I fabricated a complete front and rear suspension for the car.
Up front is a classic short-long-arm (SLA) design with billet (7075 alloy) aluminum uprights, tubular control arms with Delrin and needle bearing bushings, and Howe racing balljoints. A Tony Woodward rack, QA1 shocks and springs, and Stock Car Products modular sway bar complete the setup. Out back is a road-racing style 3-link, one of Morrison’s rear sway bars, a Moser aluminum 9-inch third member.
With the suspension complete, I wrapped up the body sheet metal and fabricated the tinwork in the engine bay. I also had to get the custom ididit steering column and Wilwood pedal setup to work in the car. With all that done, and in the dead of winter in early 2005, I put the car on a rotisserie and painted the underside and engine compartment with PPG products (self-etching primer, DP90, and single stage industrial gray).
Brian Schein made the uprights from billet 7075 aluminum. Also visible are the Wilwood 14-inch brakes and 6-piston calipers. The lower control arms are made from 4130 tube and use Delrin bushings. Katz Tsubai did the design for the front and rear suspension.
Schein also made the mount for the Woodward steering rack. All the suspension mounting point bushings accept lubrication.
Wegner built the motor with the C5 pan I supplied. The headers that I made from Stainless Works tubing mate up to a Magnaflow X-pipe stainless steel exhaust. I built the floor around the exhaust for maximum ground clearance and the lowest point on the car is the pinch welds on the rocker panels. You can see why the floor has over 200 pieces of steel in it, too!