"MOPAR MUSCLE RE-BORN"
Big Tire Steve has big inch aspirations!
Big Tire Steve is a loyal customer of ours, we nicknamed him that because every car he has brought us we have to shove the biggest tire imaginable under it! And his VJ Sedan is no different, he has had this car for 15 years, being worked on and pushed to the side as other projects have come and gone, but was finally complete and running a tidy Hemi 6 for the duration of about 12 months or so before Steve got tired of the 200hp it made.
A long list came in with the car, on that list you better believe it, fit a whopping 325 tire under there, along with fit an LS3 and TH350 driveline and make it dead centre (something all factory Mopars lack, a centralised driveline. All Aussie Valiants were pushed over to the drivers side as they were built on an American floor pan to allow for clearance for steering box, brake systems, etc). There are off-the-shelf products in Australia to convert Valiant to LS Engine but none centered it in the car. This is where custom fabrication is the only direction.
After removing the factory bumpstops from the chassis rail, we started cutting in the front spring pockets, these were an SSD item and relocated the front spring hangers into the chassis rails, this gave us approx 3" more clearence at the front. We also relocated the rear hanger into the chassis rails aswell.
After the front spring hangers were welded in, we tackled the wheel tubs, carefully drilling out the spotwelds as we wanted to keep the factory inner and outer tubs and run an insert to widen them. A laser line was used to cut through the top of the tub to keep a nice straight line. The inner tub will be plug welded straight onto the chassis rails giving the wheel tub a massive 70mm of extra clearance.
Steve also wanted us to cut out his factory spare wheel well and replace it with a flat floor, this will allow him to run mufflers out the centre and also allow him to run a fuel cell in the boot. In true Valiant form, the spare wheel well isn't symmetrical, so the cutout is larger than it had to be, but our plan is to make it look better than factory in here.
We fabricated up the boot filler panel added some bead rolling for strength and a step in it where the tank sits. Some reinforcement welded in underneath also acts as mounts for the fuel pump and exhaust hangers. We turned up some stands so the tank sat up off the floor to make room for the sump. We also created some filler panels under the tubs to stop any unwanted rubber going under the boot floor before seam sealing the whole lot to keep that factory appearance.
Test fitting the 325's werent an issue, with room to spare. The photo to the left and below shows how low it can go before it hits the top corners of the tubs, which is far lower than steve anticipated! With this info in hand and our desired width we called up our friends at Race Products and ordered ourselves a fabricated 9" housing, rear brace with 3" tubes, which will take anything Steve throws at it!
Onto the LS swap, Steve brought us a dummy LS block and TH350 trans for mock-up. With the front sump Steve preferred, the factory k-frame needed extensive trimming resulting in us needing to strengthen it back up. We bolted it down to our jig table before we started cutting the old engine mount brackets off and cutting into the frame, we bent up some CDS tubing using it to wrap around the back of the sump and tying into the sides and front of the k-frame. The cutout was then plated so the entire k-frame was rigid and strong again.
Matt designed up some engine mount brackets using our CAD software, they were laser cut and we had them welded up the next day ready to weld onto the k-frame. We are using our 44mm poly-bushes that we use on our other products here at the shop which are made for us locally.
With the driveline perfectly centre, a 325 tire fitting beautifully under the back guards, we got our Race Products 9" back, freshly milled and finished with our logo routed in the face ready to shorten and weld on the bearing ends and perches.
The fresh sheetmetal got a textured coating, which we use to brand all our products here at TCF, and we think it looks amazing! After we finished up the main fabrication work, Steve took the car home and spent time installing his built LS3, TH350 trans. We had the diff coated after our saddles welded on and Steve installed these items, along with disc brakes. The car came back to us for a custom radiator top plate, bucket seat mounts, shifter mount, bump stop brackets and shock mounts.
An alloy radiator was used with thermo fans, so a top plate was needed to cover and secure the top to the radiator support. A template was made then drawn up in Cad and laser cut in aluminum and coated. Aftermarket bucket seats and shifter were brought in, after mocking up the seat with Steve sitting it, we had the location of the shifter locked in, so custom seat brackets were drawn up using the factory floor pan holes along with a shifter mount at a height Steve was comfortable with.
Steve opted for fully adjustable Viking coilover shocks for the rear, we wanted to have them at full vertical so upper mounts were welded into the chassis. Bump stop brackets were made and welded onto the inside of the rail, replicating the factory brackets. Picture above shows diff in after coating, fuel and brake lines in, traction bars and shocks installed.
Photo above shows the engine bay fully dressed. Steve sent the car to get full exhaust built as we were tied up with other builds. This car came out fantastic, we're very proud of the work on this car and showcases how we can achieve basically every design brief the customer has. Some photos below show the car fully built and tearing up shows and events!
If your interested in booking in your car for custom fabrication work, click the button below to take you to our form, tell us about what work you need done and we will contact you back!