Anyone mount their coil overs in front of the rear end with ladder bars?

With my current leaf spring set up my shocks are in front of the rear end and just outside the frame rail. There would be room to mount coil overs in the same spot I believe. My thought would be that since the car has such a long wheelbase (114") having the springs and shocks in front would in effect shorten the car and the weight in the trunk would have more leverage on the rear axle. It seems most people mount the coil overs behind the rear end. Any thoughts?

Put in the rear, they will have more effect this way.

I have seen it done in the past, but nothing with in the last few years! What length ladder bars are you going to use?

Ladder bars are 32" CM double adjustable. Right now I have leaf springs and floaters. I'll need to add a diagonal link or locator of some sort also.

my bars were 30" center line of housing to center of front heim....S&W said to use 36" bars on cars our size that are nose heavy to boot

Have to dig out my thinking cap on the rear overhang weight thing... pretty sure that is a non issue. What is an issue is that the effective spring rate will be lower in front of the axle than behind. Doesnt really matter but just know that most recommendations for spring rate will be based on rear mounted. You would need to run a heavier spring to compensate or achieve the same actual wheel rate. Same goes for shock valving. you will need a heavier shock setting to achieve the same effect as the rear mounted deal.

dkp

'65 T-BOLT wrote:my bars were 30" center line of housing to center of front heim....S&W said to use 36" bars on cars our size that are nose heavy to boot

Actually mine are 32" bolt to bolt. From front bolt to centerline of the housing they are close to 36". I remember one of the reasons we made the ladder bars ourselves was that we couldn't find any off the shelf ones that were long enough. Most of them are 32-33" to housing center line I believe.

I have been looking and I think S&W are the only ones with 36" bars

'65 T-BOLT wrote:I have been looking and I think S&W are the only ones with 36" bars

I'd have to agree with them on the 36". The car actually hooks pretty good the way it is. I'm just looking for more adjustability and eliminating the leaf springs will save around 80 lbs.

The coil over shock's valving/dampening rate is also effected by placement in front/behind the housing. The closer to the I/C a coil over shock is placed, the looser a given valving/dampening setting will seem. That's why over the years most everyone has gone with the shocks being mounted behind the housing as the HP/TQ numbers continued to increase. This helped to gain back some of the valving adjustment window.

The Booze brothers ran the coil overs on the front of the rear for floor board clearance issues on thier g-force 4 speed 62 Galaxie. The car ran in the 8.800 range and was a wheelstanding sumabitch . I would think you would need a little stiffer spring to run them up front because you will have a probable 12" difference in the mounting location once you factor in the brackets and a 3" tube. X2 on what Dave said about the valving also.