Headed down SR 20 to a local burger joint on a Friday nite in November 2023, a lifted Toyota Tundra traveling in the opposite direction crossed into my lane. Narrowly avoided a 60+mph head-on collision, but still made heavy contact. In this pic I was coming from the opposite direction rounding this curve, while the Tundra was coming from this direction and drifted across my lane...

The sideswipe impact almost ripped the rearend out of my car. Rubber marks down the driver's door, even rubber on my driver's side rear view mirror. The impact ripped the LF tire off the Tundra and bent the spindle....

Primary damage was a severely bent the axle and axle tube, also spun the axle tube in the center housing. If the axle tube had not spun, the chassis damage would have been much worse...

When the tube spun, it wrapped the shock around the axle tube and ripped the brake line off. Single master cyl, so had to spin the car around to avoid hitting the end of that cement bridge. Engine spun backwards slowing the car down, spit fuel all over the valve covers and intake...

I had wanted to lower the rear of the car for quite some time, so decided this was the perfect time to give the car a Two-Lane Blacktop style radius job and add wider wheels. I knew I wanted the rear tires to stick out, but it took me a couple months to settle on just how far. This is a shot of what the stock rear wheelwell area looked like before the modifications, it had been a couple years since the underside if this car had been cleaned. Pretty dirty. Pro Tip- don't point your exhaust at the ground...

In the end I decided to do a 1-3/8" mini-tub, which would give me enough inner sidewall clearance to allow plenty of articulation without rubbing. Step 1- I cut out the stock wheel tubs...

Here you can see that I cut thru the center of the original upper spring perches, also completely removed the original upper control arm anchor points from the chassis...

Here's a shot of a stock wheel tub mocked in-place, a 1-1/2" strip of 16ga was added to its outer radius...

On the floor, you can see the modified Crown Vic 8.8 housing. It was narrowed and 9" ends installed, housing width is 46.5". With a 2.50" brake offset, axle flange / axle flange width is 51-1/2". You can also see the torque arm I fabricated, the nose anchors up in the trans tunnel with a shackle arrangement. The driveshaft passes between the shackles, they double as a forward driveline loop. The bracket on the right axle tube is the pivot for the watts linkage that centers the rear in the car. Same torque arm that was on the 8.5" 10 bolt that got bent in the crash, just modified it to fit the 8.8. Easy 1.30 60's with this setup...

Here's the new wheels/tires, 275/60-15 M/T drag radials on 15x12 with 5" backspace Weld wide 5 beadlock wheels. My hotrod before this one had wide 5 wheels as well, but it was a Dirt Latemodel...

Here's the bare 8.8 with brackets and mocked in-place, necessary to determine where and how tall the new bump-stop brackets needed to be....

Here you can see the new bump stop brackets welded to the underside of the frame rails You can also see where I notched the stock sheetmetal "frame rails" to make room for the coil-overs...

Here's a shot with the rear on the bump stops...

Here's a shot at full extension! Plenty of front and rear suspension travel for those un-prep'd Mexican backroads...

The shocks are non-adjustable, but there are many off-the-shelf valving combinations available. These have 4/6 valving, I also have a set of 3/5. With plenty of travel and a soft clutch hit, this car doesn't need stiff shocks to hook up...

These are stock un-modified springs from the rear of a '86-'91 RX-7, rate is 98lbs/in. The inside dia is larger than the typical 2-1/2"id coil-over spring, so I machined some spring adapters from a 4-1/2" dia chunk of Delrin. With the larger dia springs, I shouldn't have to worry about the springs rubbing on the coil-over sleeves...

Here you can see that I made the spring base as wide as possible. I could have easily put the shocks on the inside of the frame rails, but that narrow spring base would have required a very stiff sway bar. Narrow spring base, a spool, and very stiff ARB's are the reason you see cars at the strip crash into the wall. With a wide spring base, a TruTrac diff, and some articulation available, this car is far easier to control when it gets out of shape...

I went with round rotors this time, never liked the pulsing feel I got from the earlier scalloped rotors...

All done and on the road! Front tires are Firestone 135-15 on 3-1/2" wide Weld Prostars...

As you can see, I chose to leave the body damage as a reminder of what could have happened...

Just a fun street toy that I use to develop my clutch control products, doesn't have any chassis reinforcements or even a roll bar...

Here's some pics of it running the front straightaway of a paved 5/8mi oval back in 2011, putting in work gathering data for my clutch control products...

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Click on the above pic to see more pics/info about the rest of the car, also details of the custom bellhousing fabrication...

Click on the logo below to check out my ClutchTamer and Hitmaster clutch control products...