Skunk River Restorations

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Duke Mk1a

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Yesterday a fellow Tiger owner and friend of mine had an open house at his business, Skunk River Restorations. It is located in Ames, Iowa and was a 3.5 hour drive.

He had this building purpose built and it was amazing. The room (arena) with all of the car is at the far end of the building. Nothing explains better than pics.

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Duke

Amazing is right...that place is huge. Hard to tell how much space to actually work on the cars. How many lifts and how many cars can he work on at one time? I assume some of those cars are just donor cars or are they all projects.
Did you get any background on the Mustang fastback?
 
VaCat33 said:
Duke

Amazing is right...that place is huge. Hard to tell how much space to actually work on the cars. How many lifts and how many cars can he work on at one time? I assume some of those cars are just donor cars or are they all projects.
Did you get any background on the Mustang fastback?
Click to expand...

The back room is ~ 1/2 of the building. Center room has three RV/track rigs, a bus, two mustangs, race car and trailers with race tires. Front area has the work areas you see and two lifts.

No, no background on the mustang.

Google earth shows that it is 24,000 sq/ft

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STEVE AND ALLAN'S TOYS

DUKE:
I missed when you left to go home, but about that time Allan, Larry and I went to Allan's house to view the rest of his toys ( MK I Tiger, Boss Mustangs, Pantera etc). To see the rest of the collection go to " fordmustangus" all of the garage at the website to view the rest of their toys.
 
chirodoc said:
DUKE:
I missed when you left to go home, but about that time Allan, Larry and I went to Allan's house to view the rest of his toys ( MK I Tiger, Boss Mustangs, Pantera etc). To see the rest of the collection go to " fordmustangus" all of the garage at the website to view the rest of their toys.
Click to expand...


I looked around for ya. Had a 3.5 hour drive back. Was GREAT meeting you, good times. I hope we can do it again when the weather is better, we can bring our Tigers.

I am going to try to make the NASA race at Heartland Park in May, will be my first road race with the Tiger. Now that I have good brakes, the car is ready.
 
Duke:
From the looks of your car autocrossing in the Ford Windsor site, You need a bigger front sway bar at least an inch dia.
 
2 Cents worth of caution

66TigerMK1A said:
Buck made some a few years ago.. don't know if he has any left or made any more batches...
http://catmbr.org/VB_forum/showthread.php?t=222

Jim
B382000446
Click to expand...

I put a 7/8" bar with teflon bushings on old #78. It stays very flat but I noticed that the A-arm slots are being destroyed. Time to move the weak link again by beefing up some re-version of the mountings. . . .
 
Back to the collection,

I could see at least 5 series IV/V alpines there, some with factory and some after market hardtops.. and the Harrington LM.. are these cars on the racks waiting for resto, or does he own some of them too? Are the alpines parts cars or projects?
 
FRONT SWAY BAR

Touch base with TOM HALL @ MOD TIGER ENGINEERING..
If all fails British Victoria has 7/8 in front bars and 5/6 rear bars. They need nylon deldron or teflon bushings rather than the the standard rubber bushings
The front lower control arms will need reinforcement where the clips attatch. Pieces of 1/4 in bar stock welded to the control arm have worked for the past 25 years!
 
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Flat vs understeer

Tiger frustration:eek:

The stock suspension geometry is not friendly to roll because the contact patch on the wheel/tire on the side under compression tends towards leaning more than the car to the outside of the turn.

Two popular solutions are to stiffen the anti sway bar and run relatively high static negative camber often together to improve grip at the front.

If you do not make the rear proportionally stiffer in roll the result may be more under-steer! A more compliant (in roll) rear suspension will provide more total grip from both rear tires than the constrained fronts with much less weight on the inside front tire.

Rick
 
Great pics. I would love to have that type of car storage system in my building that I don't have yet. :)
 
skunk river restorations

chirodoc said:
DUKE:
I missed when you left to go home, but about that time Allan, Larry and I went to Allan's house to view the rest of his toys ( MK I Tiger, Boss Mustangs, Pantera etc). To see the rest of the collection go to " fordmustangus" all of the garage at the website to view the rest of their toys.
Click to expand...

The web site was in error. It is " ford mustang.us" sorry for the dropped period.
 
Thank you

Duke,
Thanks for the great pictures. I was alerted to your posting by Roger Nyberg. Nice to see people getting together during our long midwestern winter.
 
Sway Bar

Agree with most of what has been said. Aadco made a 1" solid bar at one time and may still be available. The problem will be finding 1" bushings to fit in the standard locating clips. Clips need reinforcement as stated. A heim jointed panhard rod, horizontaly mounted from a reinforced mounting point on the passenger side will do wonders for reducing corner lean. Not a world beater set up but combined with Koni shocks stiff front coils 450# and some rework of the rear leafs worked well for me over the later years of Vintage racing my Tiger.
 
Super Pro (Australia) sells very nice 1" polyurethane sway bar bushings in two different hardnesses. They have a US distributor.

I currently run 1" front bars on two Tigers.

For over 10 years I have used a rather crudely made Addco bar with reinforced clips on our race Tiger.

The street Tiger has a custom 1" CrMo bar that fits much more precisely than the Addco. I have been running it for a couple years without installing reinforcing clips. So far, so good.

There is no question that Clips do fail. Either the small tab on the top of the clip fails or it rips out the front of the lower control arm that is supposed to contain it. These failures seem to be caused by the bar exerting a forward force on the clip, in the horizontal plane.

In motion, the forces between the bar and the control arm are basically vertical. The only way I've been able to imagine a forward force is when a bar does not precisely align with the front surface of the control arms. A bar that you have to fight to install has a lot of preload that constantly flexes the tab and its mount when on the road. A properly made bar doesn't have this preload.

I'm still holding off on reinforcing the clips on the street Tiger. I'm trying to learn if they're still needed with a better fitting bar.

bt
 
When Dale installed my lower control arm bushings years ago, I had him do the SW bracket reinforcement. So I am good there.

So what are the thoughts on the VB 7/8 bar?
 
SWAY BAR DIAMETER

Torsional stiffness of A 7/8 bar is 185 % more than the stock 5/8 bar.
Torsional stiffness of a 1.0 diameter bar is is 316 % more than the 5/8 bar.
Torsional stiffness of a bar varies with the 4th power of the radius.
 
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