Technical So What's Your Angle? And Why?

It depends on the ride.

 

The car decides the stance but I prefer a slight rake

 

With torsion bars I have a choice.

 

If you sit and study certain cars for a bit there might even be a "formula" to set the stance. Starting around 65-6 most Chrysler products were delivered with a rake to em. Eyeball the drip rail and you'll notice that it's higher at the windshield than over the 1/4 windows. What looks to be the dead-on-balls perfect stance is a level roof. All the lines on the rest of the car fit that nose down look to perfection. It can be well above or below stock hgt, but as long as the roof levels out you're in there like swimwear. Another one that's a real favorite among many here, the 59-60 Elcamino. Another car that wants a level roof which means down in front just a minor percentage of the overall. Darker colors forgive that some but level the roof (or drip rail) and it gets snotty looking pretty fast. As to what's the best hgt on any given car from any era, I'd say look at the corporate drawings in advertising, and in many cases the ringer they use to portray that new car hugging the ground. The 1st generation GM F bodies went too far in some ads, but most were loaded with sand bags or had their coils torched a bit to make them more appealing. Indeed they were, yet some went for the sky as soon as the payment book was in hand. The tail dragger, well I'm in the pre-war coupe camp as well. It's look lost on some but cherished by many. Some of the mid/late 30s coupes can do both well. 37 Chevy and 35-6-7 Ford come to mind. These can carry a racer/rod nose down just as well as a tail down look, but it has to be styled right. 40 Ford coupe? Nothing but a wee bit down in front works. Even a rubber rake is enough (big n littles) and it almost looks like the boys at Ford styling could see the future and designed it to embrace that stance. My opinion, your results may vary...

 

I've always been partial to the rake look. When I re did the suspension on my '40, Everything was supposed to be lowered but level. Then I put 205/60 (24"tall) in the front and 265/75 (31"tall) in the rear and got my rake! sometimes the tires make the rake as it did on mine. I've been asked many times when I'm going to lower the rear and I might....some day.

 

Ok now, I have to go with a slight rake, maybe 2 or 3 inches. It just looks good to me.

 

My 41 was given the motor boat stance back when she was new, Jive bomber summed this look up perfectly in the above blog.
Lowered with restraint is hard to do, but worth the effort

 

On hot rods I like a 3 to 5 degree rake. Customs either even drop or tail dragging a bit. Just depends on the car. The Olds is 2.5 all the way around. The 32 pickup has a 5 degree rake.

 

Once the door is open I think help from somebody outside on the ground would be required to close it.

 

It all depends on the car. My car is perfectly flat, but there is some perceived rake from the chop and the tire sizes. I like Flat stances and some slight rake. Heavy rake isn't much for me..

 

Each way has its moments; each way can be got wrong.

I spent some time staring at photographs in the mid-'90s, and came to the conclusion that a rake looks best when the height of the tyres above the cill line is the same all round. Analyse cars that have that look, and you'll find it's true nine times out of ten.

Skirts. Conventional wisdom has it that skirts and a rake don't work together, and most of the time that's true. I'd say raprap's car is an exception. I'd been playing with skirts derived from those on '40s Alvis TAs for the Morris Minor and, playing around on Photoshop, found that a very slight rake makes all the difference to that look.

There's another look I've been investigating. It comes from the use on some traditional specials of "fats & skinnies" rather than bigs & littles. It comes down to the traditional approach on custom bikes: tyres of the same overall diameter, but skinny on a large wheel at the front and fat on a smaller-diameter wheel at the rear. To pull this off you'd want a roughly level stance, and aim for a tall, light, majestic look at the front and a heavy, muscular, aggressive look at the back. These are getting there but I think it could handle getting a lot more emphatic:

 

I grew up in the 60's and I used to follow the gasser wars so the Big John and SWC cars made a big impression on me. An older guy across the street had a 40 Ford coupe and I fell in love with it. So over the many years of playing with my 40, I took styling ideas from the McCoy 40




and mixed in some bad ass 60's gassers competition style





and this is what I came up with. I always thought 40 fords looked a little "gangly" all jacked up in the front, so I opted to drop the front end, so my style is "raked".