bnickel
Founding Member
The main problem with a structure that is "too" stiff is that instead of the energy of the collision being absorbed by the crush zone it is passed on to the occupants. This means there is more energy for the secondary collision - you and the steering wheel or shoulder belts, etc...
To this end SN65 hasn't extended anythinig past the shock tower.
Reem made his strut so that it will bend in a frontal collision.
My strut ends just forward of the front suspension.
A strut that reaches all the way to the front of the frame would be stronger but it also eliminates the "crush zone" although I don't think it was engineered as such in 1964.
The idea is to survive the collison, not save the car.
exactly what i was talking about. no, there was no crush zone engineered into these cars originally however, by ending the reinforcements at the shock tower or just forward of it or using a curved down bar, mounted in such a way that it deflects the impact away from the chassis, like a curved down tube that reaches al the way to the front but is welded at 45 degrees or so to the frame rail so that the impact will, in effect, deflect outward from the car and down.
personally i wouldn't add the tubes any further forward of the shock towers, now keep in mind we are talking about a car with shock towers, not a car with a MII type suspension which needs the down bars all the to the front of the frame for stability and strength that is lost by removing the shock towers.
by the way, i have very rarely seen a frontal collission on an early mustang where the impact weny much further than the shock towers and the ones that did had the front frame sections bent down after the towers, so whether it was engineered that way or not there is some, not a lot, but some crush area to these cars, unfortunately it's the main are we're trying to strengthen here, so we need to put that back somewhere, so just move it forward of the towers