Protouring style 1966 Ford Fairlane

[Tyler D]

Hi everyone, I have finally broken down and started a thread about my car. I would like to show some of the mistakes I have made so other people can learn from them. It seems like the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
I would also like to take a moment to thank some of the people that have helped me along the way. Tom, Rich, Bryce, John and the rest of the San Diego Cam Class, thanks for the constant competition and camaraderie. Also, thank you to Mike Maier and Guy Ankeny. They helped quite a few times to stay on track and make my car faster.
I will post some pictures, in no paticular order of past races and past projects.























http://lateapexphoto.com/p632155182/h255b08b5#h255b08b5
http://lateapexphoto.com/p765931949/h19f16309#h19f16309
http://lateapexphoto.com/p1027945703...56f8#h1e1456f8
http://lateapexphoto.com/p487895350/h3ba3816f#h3ba3816f
http://lateapexphoto.com/p213474715/h31e76538#h31e76538
http://lateapexphoto.com/p445456656/h2b149509#h2b149509
http://lateapexphoto.com/p445456656/h27ae6368#h27ae6368

These are from Qualcom Stadium in San Diego over the past couple of years. I will go back and edit in some more pictures in the future.
Let's fast forward to now. For about year, I have been doing some major work on my car. I had some work done by a local shop. I had a new motor built and the leaf springs ripped out. I recently move up to Salt Lake City and unfortunately, the car was in no condition to drive up. As I learned, buying a house and starting a new job takes up a lot of time. It took awhile to find a shop that could finish everything up that was also local. One of my recent life lessons is to have a qualified shop / person do what they do best. For example, if you want an off road truck, take it to an off road shop. If you want a lead sled, take it to shop that has built them before. If you want a race car, take it to a shop that builds and races cars.
I went to the local race track and watched and asked around. One of the shops that was constantly mentioned was LYFE motorsports. I did some googling on them. They have raced Pikes Peak. They only won the 6 Hour WERC Endurance Race at Miller Motorsports Park last year. Just last month they took their car to Australia to compete in world time attack. I took my car to them to do a general safety check about a month ago. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going be in a serous accident because something of dumb.I wanted them to check out the work that had been done by the previous shop and the work that I done. It was recommended that everything in the back be redone.
I am going to post up the progress as we go.

[Tyler D]

I'm new to this online posting thing, so please forgive me. Here are some pictures from the shop over the past three weeks.

Old suspension cut out and the area cleaned up!






Center sheet metal cut out and replaced. Tubes added to the existing down bars.





Cutting the templates for...



the diff truss! This is an 8.8 out of an explorer. The center is cast iron and needs some special prep & skill to weld on. This seems like a much simpler solution. I believe it is made out of 16 gauge steel so it wasn't too heavy.





New shock cross member welded up and in.









Panhard mount to the chassis.


Mount to the axle.

[blue04.5]

Looking forward to your updates. I'm a Tyler D as well. My younger brother has a 67 galaxie he's building. His will be more traditional stop light cruiser though.

[GregWeld]

Welcome!!!

I'm just up the road from you - in Sun Valley, Idaho.... but I don't know much about cars or any of that kind of stuff. :>P

[SSLance]

Welcome, nice car. I love making a cone chaser out of an unusual suspect. Nice work so far. Looks like you get a bit crossed up every now and then...

[rustomatic]

Cool car--there's a guy who runs one of these (white/blue stripes) with the NorCal Shelby club. I'll look forward to progress pics!

[Try2paz]

keep us posted on the build! When does it go into the speed shop?

[Tyler D]

Thank for the kind words every one! Here is todays update!

New tubes on the roll bar being welded in. The new ones are silver. There is alot going on here. I really like / appreciate the rail reinforcement in front of the rear tubes.

[Try2paz]

Are you still planning on adding a seat belt bar across? I'm no cage guy but isn't that a lot of load on one corner?

[Chad-1stGen]

Originally Posted by Tyler D

Thank for the kind words every one! Here is todays update!

New tubes on the roll bar being welded in. The new ones are silver. There is alot going on here. I really like / appreciate the rail reinforcement in front of the rear tubes.

After spending untold hours reading the roll cage thread on corner-carvers it looks like you have a shop that knows road race

The thing I see over and over again on Pro-Touring cars is having the rear down bars on the roll bar go to random places in the trunk, often with bends. Having them go straight to the upper shock mounts and having the diagonal go from passenger lower to driver upper is supposed to help handling and torsional stiffness. On the right track.