Clean Enough To Sleep Indoors Again-- January 5, 2008

Our bud Marty, who is a fabricator and does things with metal that we only dream about, came over last night and we started talking about the plan for the van's next life. Drew and I had the front end nearly out when Marty arrived and he helped us get it completely out. rolling some rubber under the front wheel wells, we basically lowered the front down as far as we could to see how far we could drop it before the tires interfered with the front wheelwells. Long term goal is to put a Mustang II Front end in so that we can achieve an extremely low but equally safe ride height. We discovered that if we plan the wheel and suspension spacing carefully, we can get real low by setting the wheel back a couple of inches within each well. Playing around with turning radius, we think we can pull off a very low ride height without reworking the front wheelwells. For the short term, we'll keep the stock suspension, relocate the springs below the axles and add blocks until it sits where we want it. It won't be driveable but it be a rollable. While under the van, we studied the unibody and determined that we've got some serious reinforcing to do before get too far along. We made a parts list so that we can begin scrounging parts from craigslist, swap meets, etc. We'll share that soon. Here are some shots of the van in the garage, where it will be for the foreseeable future. The fun has just begun.