Front axle-suicide or not????

Yup, not that large, because of the sweep and shape of the arm, but a nice litte clean slot. I want to add stops right in the slot to brace the opening and to have proper bumps stops in the travel. The motor is a 396hp sbf I built in while in college that is dressed like a mid-late 60s drag motor. Not my first engine choice for the car, but I know a lot about small fords and wanted horsepower on a budget and not a sbc. I think it'll look right with the induction and with the rear suspension it might pull the front end with the right tires...but I'm getting ahead of myself, lol. Hopefully I can knock out a lot of fabrication this weekend and post some pics sunday night.

 

You'll find some good info in this thread.

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150434

 

I'll weigh in on this. I am going with a design that the guys at Shadow rods are using in their LRHC design. (Low Ride High Caliber) On their 27 XL.

They mount the spring inside the wishbones with tube shocks directly above the spring mounts.

The axle is about 3" forward of this and sits out in front of the radiator shell all by itself on the ends of the "bones"

The spring is mounted directly under the radiator and the frame ends there.

The design includes a special radiator core support structure hidden in the rad shell that mounts the headlights and the upper shock mounts as well as the rad.

If the spring breaks, the car will be held up off the ground by the shock(s) mounted firmly on the core support, as shown in this picture of the setup with no spring in place.

A couple other shots as well.

 

Your coupe is looking good and I agree that you should avoid adding too much to the wheelbase in the front suspenson design... suicide or otherwise. I am using a 37 tube axle and leaf spring suicide style on my T coupe which adds about 5 inches or more over what you could do with the torsion bars. pix on my website.

 

I like the idea of a torsion bar front susp. there allways seems to be used bars if not the arms on ebay. Here are two pics of a frame and susp. i did for a customer, firewall to axle center was 35". Spring is behind as well as the tie rod and the 36 truck grille sat out in front of the axle and had a mount added later to hold it and the radiator. The next frame i did had a metal plate spring perch instead of the tube here, it gave me more radiator room.

 

Great pics! Thanks for the thread garyv, the shadow rods position of the axle in reference to the grill shell is what I'm aiming for now, got a good look at their cars first hand last weekend at NSRA, and lliked the way their cars looked. thats a nice frame 117harv, really nice perch too! Thanks guys, gettin some great information from this thread!

 

I also wanted to have straight rails without a z or sweep.Here's how I did mine. It's spring behind but the grille sits above the axle not behind it.Plus if something fails the radiator mounts would catch the axle. I don't see any reason why you couldn't do the same with torsion bars.