I have a well built confermed 504hp 486ftlbs sbc and a old 83 t/a with t-tops the body is solid and straight. should I be looking for a hard top or will I be OK? and what mods should I be looking at?

I chose to stay away from the T-Top cars, but Stephen's car runs low 9s at over 140. There's plenty of info here if you want to run a modified stock suspension.

Subframe connectors (sfcs), and a 8 point roll bar with the swing out door bars it'll look cool, be easy to get in and out of, and track legal. I've seen t-top cars twist real bad I had a buddy drove his car to the dragstrip with the t-tops out and twisted the body so bad he couldn't put the t-tops back in until he had it pulled with a frame straightener. I wouldn't sayvthat his experience is normal, but I would defiantly do some sfcs and u arta be golden

All third gens need SFC. My car got a 6 point roll bar after the first year of racing. It now has a full cage and it still has T-tops.

T-Tops are fine. It makes it easier to weld the cage in but, probably not as safe if you roll the car. My car has Home made Sub frame connectors, SW 8 point roll cage (Not Roll Bar), Spohn torque arm with trans crossmember, 90/10 struts, 3 way adj shocks, Spohn LCA relocation brackets, Spohn adj lca's, spohn adj panhard bar, stock springs and a moser 9" with 31 spline axels (full spool) and the most important part is a wolfe race craft anti roll bar. The anti roll bar is well worth the money. Look at my youtube videos and you will see the difference it will make. My quickest 60 ft on the juice 2 years ago was 1.38 and that was the 10.50 pas on youtube. I plan to spray the car this weekend with a 175 shot and will post the results.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQyWeDLQDsU

The people I bought my car from were going to turn it into a drag car but the t-tops stopped them from doing so. Not sure of what their goals were but so far I've just been running mid 10's on the bottle and 11.80's on motor, no problems yet. The tops still fit fine and haven't seen any sort of cracking forming. Drove around for a while with no sfc or roll bar. Putting those two things in though really cut down on the creaking body when pulling in/out of an angled driveway.

you lucked out, after two 7.2X passes my roofline cracked about an 3/4 inch on my car. welded iy up and repainted it after sfc and roll bar.

i got not no subframe connectors or a cage in a ttop car and mine runs 10.20s. lol not safe though

Maybe I was just unlucky, that makes much more sense.

My t-top car seems to be doing well. It 60's in the mid to low 1.3's and runs 9.8's. I have a 8pt SW roll bar no SFC's. I'm installing a antiroll bar hoping to eliminate some of the twist.