Project Muscrate
Construction begins!
This would be my son Michael checking out the new Muscrate. Is it just me or does he appear to have a halo above his head? That won’t last long, I bet! He is pretty awesome.
i everyone and welcome back! Same old story…been busy. Also had an unfortunate family issue with my wife Amy’s aunt, who at the young age of 46 had a major stroke and is not doing well. She was also our 13-month-old son Michael’s babysitter and let me tell you it is not easy to find a day care for a 13-month old on short notice. At least not one we can afford! Holy cow! I think I’m in the wrong business! Anyway, Daddy day care was on active duty for most of a week and that put me severely behind at work and I have been digging out ever since. Sorry I missed last month but as has been said, “life happens”. On to the taters.
In the last article I covered the basic plan of converting Muscrate into a rip snorting Super Stock Modified entry and also listed some of the parts sourced from Competition Engineering and Moroso that I am using to accomplish the next evolution of Project Muscrate. Also, I secured the car on jack stands and leveled the chassis as best I could, within a 1/16th of an inch.
I also demonstrated a tip about using tape and writing down the floor-to-tape-mark measurement on each side of the car at the rear to give a reference point for keeping track of body sag after cutting away the inside structure of the car. After everything was leveled and secured, I began removing the floor and stock sub-frame rails from the door openings rearward. During the process I frequently checked my tape marks to make sure the body was not sagging too much and I also added a couple of jack stands under the rear bumper reinforcement to prevent any sag from occurring.
 This is the beginning stages of building the frame rail uprights that the chassis 4 link brackets weld to. I kept them as low as possible to stay within the rules for the rest of the frame. |
As I stated in the previous article I will be reinstalling a small part of the stock floor after the new rear frame is installed in order to meet NHRA Super Stock chassis and floor rules. The floor rule along with the frame rail height rule seem to be kind of stupid and are a pain in the ass to work around, but they do serve a purpose, I guess. Basically, the bottom of the new rear frame rails cannot be any higher than where the old floor previously resided.