69gmachine
Member
I had a production run made of most of the parts until I hit a snag. The initial designs of the centerlink and the upper shock mounts didn't work as intended. Prototyping all of the parts would have been cost prohibitive, so I gambled and made a production run of everything as I went along, hoping to eventually recover my costs. I'm probably lucky that only two of the designs didn't work on the first try, but now I have about $6 K in scrap metal. After that, I ended up having one off prototypes made of the centerlink, upper shock mounts and a few other small pieces in order to finish the suspension. It actually took 2 more tries on the centerlink, but the last one is absolutely gorgeous. It's machined from a proprietary steel alloy forged billet and has virtually no bumpsteer. The cost to manufacture them doesn't really lend itself to a large production run though as it would be really expensive.
I was desperately hoping that degins drop spindle would have a shorter steering arm to go with the shorter throw of the GM J-car rack. In normal driving situations the large turning radius is acceptable, but I had to make a U-turn on a public road and almost hit the curb trying to negotiate the turn. I ended up having to back up in traffic (with my son in the car) before I could complete the manuever... very scary. Including the centerlink, upper shock mount, and more suitable spindle, there are 5 parts that still need to have production runs made to have a complete suspension package including the R&P steering. I won't sell the kits until I have a suitable spindle to work with the rack, but thanks for asking.
