There certainly was some difficulty with properly locating that unit. There is absolutely no good way to position or to even jack it up without it bolted to something. The four bar links need to be positioned on the frame to set the wheel base and the diff housing height ultimately sets the ride height.....and those two are somewhat dependent on each other to maintain proper anti-squat and camber gain. This all has to be done while there is no weight on the suspension because there is no good way in hell to compress that stupid leaf spring. Oh yeah, on top of that, we also have no idea how much the rear of the car weighs and conversely, how much it will compress the suspension.
So how did we do it? Well, first, we set the main mounting structure in the frame so that the car would sit as low as possible without a ridiculous amount of butchery and fabrication. We then took measurement off of the original corvette carcass to the top 4-bar mounting hole. We drilled a corresponding hole in the Willys frame and bolted the 4-bar mounting bracket to the car at the correct angle measured off of the original chassis. This allowed us to be able to set the car on the ground and get an idea of how much the spring will compress as well as what we need to do to center the tire in the wheel well.
Surprisingly, it was actually very close to where we wanted it. The wheel center line needs to move forward about a 1/4" to get it just right. This is accomplished be moving the 4-bar link forward the desired amount from the holes we drilled. It is important to note that we did find that the frame rails, while parallel to each other, where actually shifted for from each other longitudinally about a 1/2"
I think for the next one, I am going to build a locating jig off of the original chassis and correlate that with ride height....somehow.
Here is what's left of a running, driving '85 'Vette....
The next step is the front end....
