I had a great time at the NASCAR Truck Race in Daytona. Thanks to everyone that stopped by the MHR trailers. Bill McAnally ran 3 trucks with Christian Eckes having a shot at the win. Came in 3rd in the #91 NAPA Truck.  Daniel Hemrick in the #19 NAPA Truck ran the fastest lap by over a 1/2 second, but got shuffled out of the pack before the finish, winding up 26th.

It was great seeing three of my former drivers at the track, including Jimmy Pelk, Molly Helmuth & Josh Reaume.  Josh now owns a large NASCAR Ford Truck operation, running three trucks at Daytona as well. He drove one (the #22) to a 20th place finish.

Quote from: Andreas Schlachter on Feb 18, 2026, 07:08 PMHi Ron,


what do you think about the forces (velocity) rebound and compression with. Is this to stiff  or soft? I have 700 springs on front axle? in europe they sadly have no experiences.
Shocks are from ohlins lmj.
727lb corner weight 50/50 square.
roadcorse.

thanks andi

A few things,

First, please convert the numbers to US equivalents for me. I need pounds of force & inches per second.

Second, the compression ramp SHAPE looks OK, but I can't tell how much force is there.

Third, the the rebound ramp looks horrible.  Way too much rebound for a linear curve like you have. I suggest you have it revalved with a digressive piston on the rebound side. Again, I can't tell how much force is there.

Bolt in sheet metal? If you read my last post I made an open ended comment about losing to physics. Yes, there are ways to shrink and stretch metal with tooling as well as with heat after welding has done its thing, but I definitely wasn't there in my knowledge and skill. The plan to weld the sheet metal floors to the frame rails was complete and the outcome left a lot to be desired. I tried several different bandaids trying to get the oil canning and warping to subside but in the end I cut the floors out but I left a 1" flange around the perimeter to use for a bolt in sheet steel floor.




Best thing ever. Still happy that I ended up with bolt in floors. There was a lot of build left to go and the floors were intentionally thin and flat. I would have destroyed them working on the car, and I still removed them for servicing certain items on the car.






You were lookin at my welds weren't you...yeah. I know. I was learning so much and getting a lot of experience. I switched over to TIG pretty much 100% around this time. Keep learning, keep doing, keep pushing to get better. Moving on. So what about floors for the people? The collectors opening up to 3.5" next to a 3" tall tube was an issue with putting a flat floor for the driver so I did a raised false floor on both sides and spot welded (eh? learning...) into place. You'll also see pedals in these pictures.






Pedals are a 600 series Tilton overhung crossbar pedal setup and a used racing take off throttle pedal. Throttle pedal is super smooth but there's definitely more on that later getting it to work with my throttle body. Here's another opportunity to talk about planning with your build. Pedals, masters, ABS. ABS has never been in the budget for me and at the time Tilton had limited offerings for master cylinders that would hold up to ABS use. They have better offerings, now, but the price tag is still high for the ABS masters which do require a different pedal box...kinda. Why kinda...because the bracket that makes the 800 series pedals an 800 series, bolts onto a 600 series pedal box. At least on the overhung setups. I believe they've upgraded the crossbar to a trunion style on the 800 series now which does add some definite value.

So which pedals to choose? This is something I've come to have a decent amount of experience with having worked with all the different setups tilton has to offer - firewall, overhung, and floor mount. Each one has its pros and cons. I welcome anyone to weigh in on my opinions of each pedal box style.

Start with firewall - I have least experience with this one and I feel it has the most difficult Cons to overcome.
Pros - Near factory mounting height which makes reservoir mounting fairly easy. Serviceability to the master cylinders is typically easiest of the three options.
Cons - Heat...all of it. Masters right above the headers, lines are in the engine bay for at least some portion even if going into the car immediately. The firewall has to be where the masters are, requiring possible sheetmetal work with no real advantage.

Overhung
Pros -  No mounting location limitations (mostly - see cons). Depending on dash configuration, good serviceability. No preheating of master cylinders and brake lines. They just look cool if you like bending hardline 
Cons - Mounting location versus reservoir height. Later on you'll see what I had to do to get my reservoir high enough to work with the setup. If not planned properly it can be a very challenging problem to solve. If you have a full dash, serviceability is worse.

Floor mount-
Pros - Mounting and planning can be generally easier and does not require a significant structure high in the car to mount to (consider floor reinforcement) . Adjustability is an available option with cables to allow the pedal box to move - this is huge for racing with multiple drivers. Generally good heat management. Virtually unlimited reservoir mounting options.

Cons - Serviceability is a literal pain. If you have a cage, embrace your inner pretzel and probably remove the seat. Packaging, if there isn't room, you must make room in a challenging location. New floor height can sometimes cause seat position to need changing. Rocks and debris are now a much larger concern. Rocks get in places that can either stop brake operation or hinder pedal return causing other issues.

Aaaand we're back. First off, here's a picture or two of the rear crossmember. Last time it was shown, there was a loop above the driveshaft just tacked in, and that's about it. At this point I was still planning on running the car at 5" ride height under the rails. After working with Ron and lowering the ride height to 4", a straight crossmember with a relief cut on top and a loop could have been run, but some bracing, and angle cut 2x3 tube finished the crossmember off nicely.




Ok, so this is where things started going a little bit oops. Not full oops, just some oops. Exhaust and floors.

I was under the impression that I was going to be able to keep the mufflers under the car and selected the smallest OD round muffler I could find in 3.5", which was borla XR1. Here's what I came up with. Long story short - after lowering the car the muffler location was completely unrealistic, but...the exhaust shaped how the floor was made which was the second oops. So lets do this! I knew I wanted an X pipe but due to the location of the transmission and the torque arm crossmember there wasn't going to be a whole lot of room. The X pipe would need to start rotating the exhaust downwards to clear the crossmember so I make one from two 90* bends that were cut in half and clocked.

It would be interesting to see what someone who has real world data has to say about the X. What I'd seen of exhausts made by the NASCAR teams running X pipes, the two pipes making up the X should just kiss. Not merge, not cross, kiss. We're equalizing pulses and encouraging scavenging, not crashing the pulses into each other or taking two 3.5" tubes and cutting the cross section in half at the merge. That's where my mind was at least. Since then the car made great power, I must have not missed it by that much  . First exhaust I'd made and more to come. The headers were used C3 Tri-Y's that just so happened to be flush with the bottom of the frame rails. Can't turn down some fitment luck when it smiles at you.









Now comes the floor, driveshaft tunnel, and a step backwards. I wanted to keep as flat a floor as possible with the overall design, so the frame rails were always meant to be on the inside of the car. I had it in my head I could weld down the frame rails slowly and it wouldn't distort. And then I learned about fighting physics and how physics doesn't lose. Someone out there could probably take what I'd done and fix it but I couldn't. Here's some pictures of my first run at it.










I dropped the floor roughly 1" from the bottom of the pinch to meet the frame rail locations. The tunnel was a universal unit that I cut up and made work. It turned out alright but lead me to a part of the build where I would 100% change how I did it - the firewall.

Oh the firewall. I pieced and pied and welded it all together. I didn't care a whole lot about small amounts of distortion since I had accepted there was going to be some and I knew there would be a lot of things mount and covering it.






A total nightmare welding it all.


If I were to go back and do it differently, there would be a square/rectangle perimeter with bracing to the tunnel offering flat surfaces to either spot weld or bolt the firewall in place. No more outside corner welds, no more fillet welds worrying about heat, just a clean firewall and some seam sealer in key locations. Also would have likely fabricated a square tunnel with a tube skeleton out to the frame and firewall tubing. Again, everything could unbolt or be cleanly spot welded in place.

Speaking of bolting sheet metal into place...

Hi Ron,


what do you think about the forces (velocity) rebound and compression with. Is this to stiff  or soft? I have 700 springs on front axle? in europe they sadly have no experiences.
Shocks are from ohlins lmj.
727lb corner weight 50/50 square.
roadcorse.

thanks andi

At this point the motor is set in the car about 8" back from factory but not mounted, and I hadn't decided to change any suspension geometry, though I was toying with the idea of having Ron make me a pair of spindles. The Tilton bellhousing has mounts integrated to be its own midplate. The bellhousing was an older front mount starter design using a 153 tooth flywheel, while the newer models are typically a rear mount starter that require different...well, everything. For anyone thinking of the rear mount stuff, its great but you need to make sure and consider floor/firewall clearance when setting the motor back.


Due to the motor being dry sump and having a decently shallow pan, the lowest point of the driveline is the bellhousing. TIlton does flatten the bottom to allow things to be a little lower. I put the bottom of the bell flush with the frame rails for several reasons - easy mock up/support of the motor and transmission, keeps the motor from being the lowest thing on the car, and makes application of a flat bottom easy in the future. 






Repurposed bay bars! Haha! The bent tubes sent that weren't long enough to be a bay bar worked out as motor mount tubes. Mounting plates are 3/8" aluminum that later had another ear added to the back of the frame side to put them in double shear. It has always bothered me the single shear at the bellhousing but I've seen so many of this style bellhousing mounted in that way. Its also important to use a quality high performance fastener in this application.

AN hardware or shear bolts are a good choice. Measuring them can be a bit of a pain, but they're sold in incremental lengths and different thickness washers are intended to be used as spacers to make up for small differences as they have a very short threaded portion. They also incorporate jet nuts, which are a great low profile nut but remember, they get torqued to a much lower spec than typical hardware and incorporate mechanical locking. I don't use them in as many places as I should but that's been ramping up recently. 

Time for something up front. I was looking for something other than a typical front plate due to the stack up of all the accessories, and I needed a brace to tie the front shock towers together so I decided to make a combination piece to serve both purposes.


Brace mount!







Doing this only required one change to the accessory drive. The third picture you can see the mounting ear for the power steering pump. there was a spacer there that needed to be shortened. The motor came out of the car several times after this during the build and the brace mount usually gets left on the engine.

I moved around this time, so the back drop is going to change.

Back to work. Little more brace suggested by Ron.


The front tubes land on top of the factory frame rail where I intended to run the ARB...starting to think a little more like a load path.  Sadly, its time to go to work - boo. But its Friday - yay!

Couple pics of fuel cell cage that I made. This was for a 15 gallon cell which I made my own aluminum can. Always had more time than money, so I made things that some would buy. I chose an ATL saver cell for up front cost reasons but there are long term cost reasons as well. So, hard cells vs soft cells. They each have their advantages and disadvantages. Hard cell is less resistant to crushing but more resistant to piercing. Hard cell doesn't expire...that one is the big reason I chose it. For the best in safety, shape options - both off the shelf and custom, and internal configuration (they'll internally configure your bank account too), the soft cell is the best. There is one other item I liked about the hard cell, though, an aluminum can is able to be used vs steel on the soft cell. I was trying to be weight conscious. For those making your own can ----> READ THE MANUFACTURER DIMENSIONS! The can is to be 2 or 3% larger than the cell. The cell will grow once fuel is introduced. I, did not. Its ok, because I ended up changing to a larger cell before tuning/tracking the car first, but not before I ran out of fuel idle testing with 2 gallons still in the cell. The cell expanded and pushed the floor (and surge tank) upwards since there was no room to expand. Fuel cell cage is 1x1 .083 wall square.










We'll circle back around to fuel system later.

Right around this time, I stumbled upon Ron Sutton Race Technology. Our first conversation and business had to do with transmission gear ratios. I mentioned earlier that I had concern about a T56 and shifting at high RPM. There are solutions for this and I looked into them. Talked to a couple people about face plating, looked into a true dog ring conversion, etc. The most promising, or really what I could afford was faceplating a gearset. ZR1 ratios were recommended which are just super common to come by so I decided on a 4-speed Jerico instead. This gave me the ability to choose my gear ratios as well as replace parts instead of entire gearsets. If this was today, I would go with GForce's T101a if staying with a 4-speed. Reason - spares available new. The old school Jerico is all I could afford at the time. We'll see how long it lasts! I digress.

Good bye cruel firewall.

While waiting for the transmission to be built, I discussed some frame things with Ron. As mentioned before, I didn't have any experience in frame design or tools to bend tubing, so it was "that seems like a good idea". The cage kit was supposed to come with a traditional bay bar but idk what happened. It came with some tubes that were too short so they got re-purposed. I ran a tube from the dash bar location to the shock tower. Ron didn't ask that I start over, but did make some suggestions. This is what I came up with. I did alright for a first timer. Sorry for the grainy pics - old.


Cut and capped the removed area from the top of the factory subframe and ran tube down. Would have gone to the base of the a-pillar but driver leg and pedal interference would have been a problem at the time.






Now the fun starts!

While working with a Racer wanting to run NASA American Iron Extreme with an older muscle car, I learned the class rules do NOT allow any replacement front clip. Nothing weld-on, nothing bolt on. Nothing. You HAVE TO run the factory front clip. But, you can make a LOT of modifications. So I went to work on creating the best possible race car, while using the factory clip.

It took over a year, but now I offer complete suspension & cage packages named Race-Star ... to take 21 different Ford muscle car models & 8 different GM muscle car models (1960's-1970's) ... to race & win in the NASA American Iron Extreme class. This required a completely new front suspension package. I named it Star-System. You can see the GM version HERE. and the Ford version HERE.



For GM muscle cars, you cut off the spring bucket, cap the frame with a laser cut "L" plate we provide & weld on the Star-System Mount. It relocates the upper control arms. Allows us geometry tunability with slugs & comes with a Quik-Tune coil-over adjuster that utilizes a jack screw system.



For Ford muscle cars, you cut out the shock towers, cap the frame with a laser cut "L" plate we provide & weld on the Star-System Mount. It relocates the upper control arms. Allows us geometry tunability with slugs & comes with a Quik-Tune coil-over adjuster that utilizes a jack screw system.



I've always said if I can move 2 of the 4 suspension frame points, I can improve the suspension. If I can move 3, it's a game charger. For both the Ford & GM versions, we change one of the lower control arm mounts to a slotted & slugged mount. We relocate this mount enough to achieve optimum geometry across the board from Anti-Dive to Roll Center. On the Fords, we replace the front strut rod mount. On GM cars we add slugged brackets into the crossmember. Both of these allow us to use 2-piece GT race style lower control arms.



This whole package allowed me to create near perfect geometry, while keeping the factory front rails or frame clip.  It worked so well, I even designed weld-on Warrior front clips that use the same Star-System mounts.

With this new geometry game changer for Ford & GM Muscle Cars (F&X bodies only so far), I decided to create new suspension packages that keep the factroy front frame & utilized the new Star-System mounts.  I now offer AutoX-Star, AXT-Star (AutoX & Track Dual Purpose) & Track-Star packages for the same Ford & GM models. What started out as a game changer for NASA's American Iron Extreme ... with such geometry adjustability ... also allows me to design good track car & autocross performance.

The Autocross catalog is HERE. Go to page 3 & look up AutoX-Star packages for your Ford or GM Muscle Car.

The AutoX + Track catalog is HERE. Go to page 3 & look up AXT-Star packages for your Ford or GM Muscle Car.

The Track + Race catalog is HERE. Go to page 3 & look up Track-Star or Race-Star packages for your Ford or GM Muscle Car.