Project Six Pack - All For One And One For All

Nevertheless, the approximately 500 net rpm increase definitely made the car come alive off the line. Of course, none of this newfound power does any good unless the car hooks. Up to this point, even the nine-year-old Firestones seemed to do the job with no slippage whatsoever. But with the engine now up in the power band, it was a whole different ballpark, and this precipitated some new problems. On a high horsepower car, when super stock springs get tired, the car tries to tuck the right rear tire under and roll over it. This is a direct result of the rotational energy produced by the torque of the engine. In our case, this resulted in a very subtle "skating" effect and further aggravated a tendency of the car to pull to the right.

Thanks to fellow Mopar racer Mike Molgard, we hooked up with John Calvert, whose new CalTracs suspension system would solve this problem. If you follow Super Stock racing at all, you've probably heard of Mr. Calvert-he's the West Coast racer with the original four-speed Cobra Jet Mustang who wins World Championships with 9-inch wide stocker tires! Running in Super Stock against a legion of four-links and 14x32 monster meats, John knew he had his work cut out for him. His motives were quite simple-he wanted to race his car, but since original-paint four-speed Cobra Jets are scarce and increasingly valuable, he wasn't willing to cut it up.

John carefully studied his suspension needs and determined that a refined traction bar, similar in construction to the traditional slapper bars but using a more sophisticated approach, would do the trick. The resulting system worked so well that other racers asked to purchase similar bars for their cars, and the rest is history.

Taking things a step further, John has recently released a unique monoleaf rear spring setup specially engineered to work with and optimize the effect of the CalTracs bars. One obvious benefit is that the monoleaf springs are much lighter than the factory Super Stock spring bundle. Depending on the application, as much as 40 pounds of unsprung weight can be eliminated.

The CalTracs springs and bars cured all our handling ills and brought consistency back to the launch. Plainly evident was the absence of the almost-excessive lift the rear suspension had exhibited prior to the CalTracs. After all, the whole idea is to move the car forward as quickly as possible, not waste time separating the leaves and going up. The new converter/suspension combination also pulls the wheels off the ground consistently.

The last run we made was a "pretty as a picture" 10.77 at 126 mph, which factors out to a sea level 9.99 at 136 mph. Significantly, this was run in the summer heat, while our earlier 10.76/9.98 was run on a cool October evening. We feel confident that a little more thrashing next season will yield several more tenths from the existing setup, but it's wintertime in the Rockies, and we'll have to wait for the spring thaw to prove it. In the meantime, we're trying to figure out how to tell Frank Lupo that we need another 600 rpm.