Another Mopar Off My Bucket List - Barracuda Fastback
It took awhile but I found the pics in post #319 of your build. Maybe I'm over-worrying about some things but one of my concerns is carpeting. I'm hoping that we'll be able to find a molded carpet that will fit well later. I had an upholstery shop sew me carpeting for a car years ago and it never layed right. We won't be running a console so we won't have that center area to slice & tuck it.
An even bigger concern is strength. We saw several examples online of T-56 installations and most of them did not tie the cut off upper transmission cross-member back together. Some of them just boxed off the ends where they were cut and made a new lower support for the transmission. The factory cross-member is pretty stout. I assume it needs to be on a unibody. Even after having added in the subframe connectors for frame reinforcement it seemed to me that you'd lose a lot of strength in that area.
We even saw some places selling T-56 cross-members that didn't take into consideration the top half. Our Charger showed major signs of having body twist from the 440/4-speed combo that was factory. The right rear quarter was bowed in behind the sail panel and the sheet metal was starting to rip next to the door. We figured that a 1000+ HP powerplant would do even more damage. Our hope is that the subframe connectors will make it strong enough but I don't want to create another weak point.
One of the photos we found online that shows a bottom cross-member bolted behind the 2 cut halves of the original top.
I didn't see any photos showing an upper cross-member tie on your Barracuda. (maybe it's there but I didn't see it) I realize that Frankencuda is being built as more of a road course vehicle and it probably won't be subjected to the hard launches we think the Charger will experience but I'm still wondering if you wouldn't see a benefit.
It took awhile but I found the pics in post #319 of your build. Maybe I'm over-worrying about some things but one of my concerns is carpeting. I'm hoping that we'll be able to find a molded carpet that will fit well later. I had an upholstery shop sew me carpeting for a car years ago and it never layed right. We won't be running a console so we won't have that center area to slice & tuck it.
An even bigger concern is strength. We saw several examples online of T-56 installations and most of them did not tie the cut off upper transmission cross-member back together. Some of them just boxed off the ends where they were cut and made a new lower support for the transmission. The factory cross-member is pretty stout. I assume it needs to be on a unibody. Even after having added in the subframe connectors for frame reinforcement it seemed to me that you'd lose a lot of strength in that area.
We even saw some places selling T-56 cross-members that didn't take into consideration the top half. Our Charger showed major signs of having body twist from the 440/4-speed combo that was factory. The right rear quarter was bowed in behind the sail panel and the sheet metal was starting to rip next to the door. We figured that a 1000+ HP powerplant would do even more damage. Our hope is that the subframe connectors will make it strong enough but I don't want to create another weak point.
One of the photos we found online that shows a bottom cross-member bolted behind the 2 cut halves of the original top.
I didn't see any photos showing an upper cross-member tie on your Barracuda. (maybe it's there but I didn't see it) I realize that Frankencuda is being built as more of a road course vehicle and it probably won't be subjected to the hard launches we think the Charger will experience but I'm still wondering if you wouldn't see a benefit.