"CHOP, DROP & LS SWAP"

Steve's Pro-Street VF Valiant Hardtop

Steve brought his Hardtop to us with the end goal of having a solid street car that will occasionally hit the track and run strong with the rest. The design brief was to strengthen the factory chassis, widen the rear footprint and fabricate a strong rear end on leaf-springs. The aftermarket bolt-in components for these A-Body Mopars are sufficient for typical street cars, but given the future plans for this build, we are way beyond that point. The typical frame will only support a 12" tire at the most with very tight tolerances, and then you are limited to a higher ride height.

The car came to us on a rotisserie, so we go to it and welded in the laser cut chassis connectors supplied by SSD. This would tie the front and rear sub-frames together as-well as making the floor pan more rigid.

So, Matt, our designer/draftsmen, started working on a custom rear chassis clip design. The entire back half of the car was measured and inputted into our CAD program. Matt designed the whole rear end to coincide with Steves ultimate ride height and functionality. We worked closely with Steve on the design to make sure he was happy with where the build is headed and it has far exceeded his expectations to date.

Boot floor was un-stitched aswell as the old trunk floor extensions and wheel tubs. We were ready to swap the rotisserie for the chassis jig and start removing the rear frame rails.

3D Renderings of our Rear Chassis Clip we designed in-house for Steve's Hardtop. The chassis rails are a fully boxed and fabricated piece, no old RHS technology being used here, includes internal gussets and external strengthening plates over high stress areas. The rails were designed to slip over the factory rear rail extensions, they then taper in and follow the floor pan till it reached the boot area where it rises up 4 inches higher than the factory rails and 4" more tire clearence each side. This allows steve to easily fit a 16" wide tire. Our 4-link brackets were designed to give Steve full adjustment over wheel position, whilst maintaining parallel geometry.

Chassis rails taking shape, fully tig welded.

Images below showing the rear clip and bridge section complete and ready to test fit in the car.

Fitted in the car perfectly, exactly to all specs and tolerences Matt had designed. The Coilovers and Diff Housing went in for test fit with bracketry lining up exactly where we anticipated. Steve's track ride height is where the chassis is setup on the jig, which is shown in the below picture, which gives him 5" of diff to chassis clearence. Our design allowing him to run 4" lower than that height, by just performing a few adjustments.

We are still working on the car, so check back in regularly for updates to this one-of-a-kind Valiant!