Traction Bar setup question.

I'm putting some slapper bars on. How much gap should I have between the leaf spring and the rubber bumper? I was thinking about an inch but I'm not to sure about that.

 

That would be a good start.Typically,people ran more clearance on the street than for racing.

 

Thanks!

 

Kerry, I set mine up on the truck pretty tight. I leave just an air gap between the snubber and the spring. I did not know how to set them as I bought then used but they have been that way now several years. All I know is the truck hooks up and does not wheel hop. My next set will be cal trac bars though as they do not cause spring bind and give a better ride on the street.

 

The cal-tracs are pretty cool. I'd been thinking of making some but I ran across the traction bars for $5 and couldn't resist. Turns out I had to modify them a bunch to get them to fit right. I ended up going with about 1.25" gap. My springs are so flat I'm either going to have to shim the snubber or the back mount to change the spacing.

I think I'd have been better off if I'd made the cal-trac look alikes but this is certainly cheaper.

 

I ran 'em pretty tight on my last car, and broke a few leafs over the season....but they did their job well! I attribute the broken leafs more to the fact that they were old and the car was a four-speed than to the small gap between the snubber and the spring.

Also, alot of guys used to run a tighter gap on the passenger's side to offset axle lift, but I ran mine with about 3/4" on both sides. The car drove okay on the street like this and worked well at the track...minus a few snapped spring leaves here and there!

 

here you go Cal trac guys

http://www.hotrodsandhemis.com/Traction.html

enjoy
Garth

 

Thanks for reminding me where that link was. Got it saved for future.

 

If you are racing and don't have a posi, it is definitely worth setting up the snubber clearance tighter on the passenger side when you get to the track.

On my Camaro, I used to add washers under the passenger side snubber so there was no clearance and put a cut down snubber on the drivers side. It would change from smoking the passengers side to hooking pretty evenly, and only took a few minutes to change.

 

My one leg diffin my Falcon will spin both tires with the bars adjusted up. A bit tighter on the pass side.

In this photo the car is UP in the air on my lift for the photo op.

 

I do have a posi now but hadn't planned on it originally. I have it setup with airshocks that I can fill independantly to do some weight jacking. I used this sort of a setup on a one leg Camaro pretty succesfully.

For a while I had traction bars on it as well but I had the snubber tight against the spring and had a u-bolt at the front that held it there. I set it up like that so it would make the whole rear end act like a sway bar. Worked pretty good but was harsh. I didn't want to get that agressive just yet with the 31.

Right now I'm going to make up some aluminum shims of different thicknesses for the rear mount so I can tinker with the gap.

 

The snubber on the end of my bars have a lot of threads and a lock nut. I would think it would be easier to run a snubber in and out than to shim the back of the bar. If your bars do not have and adjustable snubber, I think you can replace it with one that is adjustable.

 

The problem adjusting the snubber side is to get the washers behind it to shim it up. I'll need to remove bolts on the front bracket of the bar to swing it down far enough to get the snubber off. It really isn't any big deal to take the two bolts off of the back bracket, slip a shim in, and put them back. Plus this gives me a little more ground clearance at the front.

 

i've been running a competition engineering SLIDE-A-LINK for a while with good results. This is a variation on a Cal-trac the difference being a poly bushing in the main link giving it a little more cushion