It`s time to get my Car ready for the drags and take it off the street. I have around 590 to 600hp 355 chevy under the hood with a full race th350 W/4500 stall. The rest of the car is as stock as it comes. What shocks are best and what lift bars should I get. If you can think of anything else I should get before I take it for a test run, feel free to jump in. I`m installing sub connectors today as I have just about popped the windshield completely out of the car.

you will need a rear end soon.

I`m sure of that
but I`m tired of doing the first 1/8 sideways.

any of the sponsors up top sell products to help you go in straight lines better. lower control arms, torque arms, pandhard bars, cages, 9" rear ends, new driveshafts, driveshaft safety loops, etc etc.

thats not really much help but thanks just the same

Install subframe connectors, install slicks, go racing.

Other stuff that can be done later:
Any aftermarket LCA and panhard bar
Any aftermarket adjustable torque arm
Koni SPA1 shocks and struts

Depending on how quick you run, you're probably going to need a minimum of a 6 point roll bar.

What about lift bars?
I only want to spend the money once so I want to do it right the first time! I`m looking in to getting LakeWood 90/10`s for the front and trying to find some 70/30 for the rear. I have a shop full of stuff that didn't work on other cars and I really don't want to ad to that collection if you know what I mean.

what i was saying is that are rear ends don't last long under power and slicks

here's what your gonna want to do:
-subframe connectors, any brand really, but i'm running a set of Jegster bolt in ones
-lower control arm relocation brackets, this will fix the geometry issues, putting the back of the lca under the front and allowing the lca to lift the front of the car and plant the rearend instead of lifting the rearend and amplifiying wheelhop.
-you can either box the stock lca's, or use an aftermarket tubular style(sometimes this is cheaper cause they come with poly bushings, just putting poly bushings in the stock ones will cost almost $80, however, i'm still running stock bushings in the lca's)
-either box the stock panhard rod or put in an aftermarket tubular style.
-poly bushing for the stock torque arm.

all this stuff netted me solid 1.64-1.65 60's and i still haven't put all the power to the ground yet. i'm hoping for low 1.6x's high 1.5x's soon. problem is, you'll over power the rearend, even with a girdle cover and aftermarket axles/gears/differential. that is why people have been saying to go to a 9" or maybe a 12 bolt.

Moser, DTS, Currie, Strange, all make wonderful replacement rearends that bolt directly into the stock location using all the stock stuff. the 9" and 12 bolts both run about $2500 from them, and you have to figure out what to use for brakes.

when you get to a point where you need to start really worring about pinion angle and such, i'd suggest running some type of aftermarket torque arm. BMR makes some nice stuff, as well as spohn. and they are adjustable so you can set your pinion angle.

i'm still running the stock front struts and monroe replacement shocks out back, so, your don't NEED 90/10's and 50/50's out back (no 70/30's available for the back of these cars that i've seen). but againk, when you get to that point, chassi engineering has a nice cheap set of 3-way adjustable rear shocks(actually, i have some i'm not using, pm me if your interested) and lakewood makes nice 90/10's or 70/30 front struts. also, Chassis Engineering has trick springs for the front, which i'm seriously considering running. (have a set in the garage, still in the box...)

at the power level your at, i'm gonna say it's gonna need an 8pt roll bar if you don't already have that, and that will really help stiffin up the car so it's not launching like a wet noodle.

hope this helps with your goals.

just so you know, there are plenty of stock style suspension guys running well into the low 8's and high 7's, so a back-half or non-stock style suspension is definitely not needed for going fast. i'm just trying to spare you the task of back-halfing the car and save another thirdgen from being cut up. it's simply not necessary.

Now that`s what I was looking for.... Thank You!!!

I have been installing some subframe connectors that bolt in (not Sure what brand as I`v had them for about 3 or 4 years just laying around the shop) The windshield is just about ready to completely fall out and I have a long crack in the tranny tunnel going under the passenger seat so I thought it`s just about time to do it right or junk the car. I have backed halfed an 86 I-Rock but I really didn't want to do that to this car. This car is nothing special but I just don't want to cut it up real bad.
I`m looking for a 9" that's the right size as I can build all the brackets, breaks and 3rd member myself. As of right now I`m gonna destroy the stock disk brake rear-end that came in the car until I find a 9". My main problem is the car wants to go sideways for the first 1/8 of the 1/4. The last time I ran the car I almost hit the guardrail at 1/2 when the car hooked up. I have parked it until I have this problem fixed.
While Installing the subframe connectors I noticed that the bushings are shot in the lower arms so I`m sure that's one of my big problems with going sideways.

Again Thanks for the info!

Your traction issue is tires. Buy some new slicks and throw the street tires away. 500 hp won't get you into the 12's if you can't get the power to the ground. Spinning off the line either means there's no track prep or you don't have sticky tires. If you have traction and the car doesn't go straight, you have a suspension alignment problem. Get the car on an alignment rack to see how bad the front and rear suspension is out of alignment.

If your suspension is still stock, it's 23 years old. It's probably all worn out from street driving all those years.

What are you running now?

just fyi stephen, more and more people on this board are getting interested in class racing, instead of local bracket racing for a local points race and alot of the classes now are limited to the type of tire and suspension you can run. Drag Radial (use to be known as BFG Traction Advantage Eliminator) is one i can think of off the top of my head, but even more, classes limiting to a real street tire instead of the drag radials. so, getting the suspension stuff squared around first will fix most of his issues, then if he wanted to put on a set of slicks or drag radials or the like, all of the issues with stuff steering him the wrong way, or whatever, will be taken car of.

I'm assuming your wanting to run lift bars to get away from the TQ arm set-up and associated hassle of fabbing your own rear end? From an outside perspective your setting yourself up for either a bust on part cost with the added labor/time needed to do this yourself.

From what I've learned with mine (and you can see all my parts in the sig) you'll be time and money ahead sticking with a stock style suspension since you can run pretty good numbers on a 10" tire and stock suspension "design"

Main problem I see with lift bars is it will net simliar results of my short tq arm, your going to asking alot of your tires when it's race time, running mine like it is I go through a set of slicks per month racing, sure alot is becuase of number of rounds I make per month, but my sidewalls just flat out give way since they are taking the blunt of the hit...not a good thing on marginal tracks. My car is pretty consistant condidering it's a street car and has proven itself with other drivers winning in it as well. My only recommendations for susepnsion if mocking what I'm running is using a Spohn or some other brand factory length torque arm that will work much better with the drag racing built anti roll bar. It will allow the chasis to work better and not make the tires take all of the abuse.

With my set-up I have susepension pre loaded via anti roll bar with just me driving and it leaves straight as a string, when I add a passenger (under 200lbs) the car drives HARD to the right. So once you get proper tires that work and it still leaves sideways, your going to have to go in and find out where in the suspension you can tune that out since cars shoukld never leave 1 way or another...anything but stright is asking for problems providing your lined up in the groove.

I just thought I'd share that you don't have to go top of the line when you order from wich ever company you would buy a rear from.I had my friend that owns a speedshop check into a Strange 12 bolt with a auburn posi and any gear I want for roughly $1600 + shipping.Its there bottom of line model,but it should handle my 500 hp 383.

Very true, the housings and tq arm mount all seem to be around the $800 mark or so, it's the important stuff you put inside that adds up quickly for a complete rear end housing. my 9" all said and done was a touch over $2500 and i picked it up from dealer, that's disc brake to disc brake.

So are you saying not to use the lift bars? I want this thing to stick to the ground.

I`m wanting to order my parts so I can go play this weekend ....errrrrrrrrr

these are the subframe connectors I`m gonna use


what to do

Hi this is really my first time on one of these so please bare with me i want to build a drag car out of a camaro i bought for parts so i was wondering if anyone knew where to find like a one peice fiber glass from clip and fenders thank and sorry if i posted this wrong give me time and i will undertsand how these things work

The lift bars are alont the lines of a "ladder bar" set-up with out the added length and tuneability of a ladder bar. For our cars it's a cheap way to build and install your own rear end, but once you step up in pwr-which it sounds like your 355 has-your going to run into tration issues having such a short IC it will over pwr the tires or at the very least push them to their limits.

You've got them already so you could just say what the heck and run/try them and see how you come out. But be prepared to reconfigure suspension especially if sticking with a small tire (meaning not tubbed)

DanielB91RS:
http://hairyglass.com
http://www.usbody.com/ShopOn-Line

I don't have them but I was thinking about getting some. I want this thing to hook hard enough to pull the front up. I know the rear end wont last and soon will have to be changed but I`m trying to set up for a stock class for a chance to win $6000.00 If I can get it hooked up, I should have a good shot at it. Just looking for the right parts to get the job done. I plan on ordering today but I`m still unsure on what all is needed.

You've got enough pwr, so IMO a reasonable EFFECTIVE suspension would comprise of:

Spohn torque arm-you pick whatever crossmember you will need for your tranney set-up. Keep it factory length (long) so chasis will take some of the abuse and not over power the tires-this is detrimental on summer days and greasey tracks....makes no sense to have 600hp if you cant stick it and get beat by a guy with 375hp cuz he hooked and left ya.

Lakewood 50/50 if on a budget or Q1A Stocker Star coil over adjustable shocks if budget is alittle larger.

Any tubular or boxed lower control arm, I run the standard spohn tubulars but if this is race only opt for the adjustable tubular control arms so it will have needed adjustiments should the car try to steer itself outta the box you can compensate with a few turns of the heim joints.

Wolfe Craft anti roll bar. ALOT more effective than the budget concious air bags in each rear coil spring-been there done that, car now plants equally and raises front end level as opposed to the bags still tqisting the car somewhat. The factory style anti roll bars just are'nt beefy enough to prevent body roll, so go big in this dept.

Some sort of 90/10 front strut, lakewood comes to mind on a budget or you could go coil over with larger budget and some fabbing. I dont know if that would disqualify you from a stock suspension class though.

I love my moroso trick springs up front also, really helps car transfer the weight.

Plan on $2-3K for your suspension upgrades to have an effective consistant working drag race suspenion, you can go higher on parts if budget allows. I like the KISS method and I dont have the best parts on the market in my car, but what I have is deadly consistant and works well enough to keep me going rounds when the track only cars are loading up on the trailer

Ok I placed some orders

I got the Spohn torque arm with TH350 crossmember and loop with the good ends.

I ordered some lakewood lower arms and some 50/50`s for the rear and some 90/10`s for the front.

What am I missing?

What size of DOT slick should I run? Don't know the gear, it`s stock. It`s a limited slip rear-end

At a minimum your gonna need air bags out back to help pre load the suspension to ease body roll, best bet is a drag race built anti roll bar like this Wolfe Race Craft

Get the tallest tire you can stuff in there for more contact area and better/more consistant traction. I was able to fit M/T 29.5 x 9" slicks with typical wheel well massaging you'll have to do with any decent tire. If you can fit a 30" tire more power to ya and just gear accordingly to compensate for the increased roll out. I've been running 28x10 slicks and 28 x 11.5 hoosier DOT slicks for yrs with great results but I'm only on the low end of 500 hp with a heavy car. So it'd be wise to spend the money once and set it up for a tall tire and gear set....when racing during hte summer this choice will help in the traction department big time....taller is better than wider since you get more contact patch with a longer foot print for increased roll out.

Given the fact your going to try and use that factory rear for now, dont buy any of these parts for immediate results since this rear will only last a few passes at best at your pwr level, I'm thinking it will let go within 3 passes at most if you have the rest of your engine tranny worked out like it sounds. Buy the taller tires now since you can set your new rear end up to match them here shortly. 28" minimum 30" ideally.

Just be sure convertor is matched to cam and make sure your tire size and gering will compliment your engine/tranney and you have a good platform to start with and build on as needed.

find out the gear, only way to properly do it is to pull the cover, count the teeth on both ring and pinion and divide the big number by the little number. your on your way to a great rear suspension. the only other thing i would do is to get some lca relocation brackets. other than that, your set!

once you find the gear ratio, let us know and we can tell you the tire size, though i'm gonna go ahead and suggest a 28x10.5 ET Street or a 275/60/15 ET Street Radial (i'm a huge fan of drag radials).

MW, not to be a sinic, but if he's indeed running the claimed pwr numbers, it wont matter what gear set he has-it will break reeeal quick like in the first few passes, no if's, and's, or but's about it, so he could have a 2.72 or a 5.36 it wont matter, what he has will be hashed on the first outting so then he can now move onto plan b and already have 1 of the parts on hand (tires) and can gear the new storng rear end accordingly.

i know...i know....i was just tellin him how to determine the ratio i suppose. i figure i'm only making about 430hp and i ripped 3 teeth of the pinion gear of my richmond 4.10's after only 6 passes.

After shredding teeth on 4 ring gears I gave up and went 9" and that was with only around 350hp LOL. Funniest thing a car guy can ever see is a stock ring and pinion from our cars sitting next to one out of a 12 bolt of 9", I think ours are better suited to go carts and not cars

unfortunately, i'll probably be one of those guys that has rebuilt his rear 6 or 7 times before i finally get the money to get the 12 bolt i want. fortunately i have a whole spare 3.73 disc rearend that finds it's way under the car whenever i hurt the "good" rearend, which is only a drum rearend with aluminum drums, eaton posi, 28 spline axles, and lca relocation brackets.

LOL, been there done that. I am lucky to have a buddy that parts out 3rd/4th gens so I had ample diffs to choose from to get me through so cost = free, but I soon tired of the headaches of constant rear end swapping and finally realized my time was better spent doing other things than swapping rear ends out all the time.

Once your budget opens up to upgrade, you will kick yourself for going through this big circle jerk for soo long LOL!! Aside from switching work trucks from Chevies to Ford, installing the 9" is the second best descion i've made when it comes to saving time/money

who is this person you speak of

hey IHI, does your buddy have a set of 3.73's layin' around somewhere? i need a set pretty badly.

Guys name is Curt, lives in Evansdale IA until this weekend, he's made enough parting out cars he bought a big area south of Jesup Ia that he's developing so if you give him a call now he might be able to set some parts aside before they're packed up and moved this weekend. his new shop is going to be pretty huge so even more parts available

Curt 319-404-7296, just tell him Josh told you to get ahold of him to see what he has. If he dont answer right away just leave a voice message and # since they are packing everything up for their move this weekend.

Well we ran the car with all the mods Saturday,
well except the tires were not in yet so I ran the street tires once again...errrrrrrr
Next week the M/T`s should be here and we`ll see a better number I hope?

R----------.0111
60---------1.9109
330-------5.4419
1/8--------8.2988 mph 86.64
1000-----10.7606
1/4-------12.8820 mph 105.07

Were you into the throttle the whole way down the track? When I ran on rock hard street tires last fall I ended up with something like a 12.6@113. With 590-600hp you should be trapping upwards of 115-120 dependening on conditions once you can keep your foot down with the good tires.

I had it pinned the whole way. The car was spinning past the 1/8. I`m sure the tires will fix that problem.

Even with wheel spin, mph shouldn't be that low. Either the car is well over 4000 pounds or it's not making anywhere close to 600 hp. MPH should be closer to 130.

I know you were spinning but ET and MPH put the HP in the 315-325 range guessing at a 3500 pound race weight because you did say the car was as stock as they come. Giving you a more generous weight of 3300 pounds puts the HP closer to 300.

You're going to need a good full pass to get more accurate numbers but I really doubt you're making 600 hp. Maybe 400 at the very most unless you can produce some great ET and MPH numbers with the car.

I know what it makes. I build allot of these SBC for IMCA mod`s
Spinning for a full 1/8, timing backed off to 5 adv to try and cut it back to slow the tire spin down is why you come up with that low number. This motor makes it`s best power at 40 adv and I was no where near that. I never got it out of 2nd and rolled the line tacked out hitting the rev limiter at 7000. Most of the time I run an 8000 rev limiter but knowing that I would have allot of tire spin I pulled it out and replaced it with the 7000. I had runs that I spun the hole 1/4 running 13`s at 113.56. Like I said we`ll see next week.

mph will suffer alot when you spin that hard. give the guy a break guys.

You can have a good suspension setup with just bolt on stuff. No need for relocation of brackets. I run a stock suspension setup on my Camaro. I have the Hotchkis LCA's in stock location, spohn adjustable torque arm, spohn rear drag sway bar, Spohn SFC's, Comp. Engineering 3-way adjustable rear shocks on 60/40, Stock rear springs, Moser 9", M/T ET Drags 28x10.5x15W. Car leaves straight everytime avg. about a 1.45 to 1.49 60ft depending on what track I'm on. Videos in sig.

Stephen 87 You were right, I was off a little on guessing the HP of this motor. I ran it on DTD 2000 and it came up with 552 hp @ 7000 and 483 torque @ 5000.
I stand corrected.

if thats a 355, shouldn't the bore be 4.030?

and desktop dyno doesnt always come up with the most acurate of numbers

We have found it to be really close to real time dyno numbers if used right.

Ok with the .030 it will make 2 more hp.
554 hp @ 7000
488 Torque @ 5000

and it really doesn't matter because if I want more hp I`ll just stick my fishing boat motor in it but I`m sure it only makes 350 hp

I agree. Don't believe what you see on a dyno sim to what you'll actually get at the track. I can tweek some numbers on my dyno sim to give me very good results but I'd never get that kind of performance at the track. There's too many variables that DD can't account for. DD numbers are only the best possible results. Simple things like timing, jetting, plug gap etc can throw the results downhill.

And also, how much power an engine makes doesn't mean much. How much gets to the rear wheels is what counts.

but you're the one trying to tell me that my motor is not making that hp. I never said I was putting it to the ground and that was what this topic was about, I wanted to know what it was gonna take to put what I was making to the ground. dohhhhhh Have you ever had a motor Dynoed????

i STILL say, that if your spinning to the 1/8th mile marker like you say you are, then your LOSING mph, and when you can get it all hooked up, come back and tell us how you ended up doing. then through some simple math using weight and trap speed, we'll figure out about how much hp your putting down.

for the record, what are the specs on your setup. c/r, cam, cylinder heads, induction, etc.

everything is on the dyno sheet except you cant see the cam spec`s. On this motor the cam is a new one I`m trying out that I`v never ran before. It`s a little smaller then I like to
use on the dirt track cars but it seem`s to pull good form what I can tell on these street tires.
537/557
256/264
.05/105 lobe center

what headers are those? cause if those are the flowtech shorties with junk 1.5" primaries and 2.5" collectors, there is half of your problem right there! get some real headers on that thing. atleast some hedman longtubes part number 68460, which are longtubes with 1 5/8" primaries and 3" collectors, but with that much cam, the hooker 2210's are in order here with their 1 3/4" primaries and 3" collectors.

also, get rid of the powersteering and put an electric fan on there. jeeze, there is still lots of power to be had out of that combo. also, what heads are you running?

the headers are the hedman shorties and they are way to small but we are running them till I can use the power the motor can make. Summit screwed up my order and sent them when I ordered the long tube headers.

I run PS on all my race cars even my dirt track cars because I`m old. I never use to run PS but as I got older it seem to grow on me. I use aftermarket pumps and tanks to save on weight and to be able to run the rpm`s I run.

As far as the fan I don't even need one because it`s on Methanol. It`s on there because I was driving it on the street last year. It too is ultra light weight but is soon to go as it`s no longer needed because of the fuel change.

The heads are some worked over World Product heads with large springs 202/165 valves that have been angle milled.

Before you say anything, the ALT is on there to power the MSD Box as the battery is in the back of the car.

Nothing wrong with running an alternator. I use one myself with a red top Optima battery. It it's charging at full amperage, the most power it will rob you of is about 2-3 hp. Chances are it will never be at max charging load.

no, i'm a HUGE fan of running an alternator, i wouldn't dream of running without one. my car is a street car, but i have manual steering and electric fan. i wouldn't have suggested anything i wouldn't do or have already done myself. though i'd consider running an electric water pump or at least an electric waterpump drive.

I got my tires today and I went with the Hoosier Quick Time Pro. 28 X 11.50.
I hope they will fit as they look kinda tall.