Finally had some time out in the garage today to work on the car. Satchell link rear suspension is coming along, and I almost have all of the lower trailing arm mounting bracketry fabricated and tacked into place. Once it is all tacked in I'll flip the car up on its side to do final welding. Welding upside down is just too much of a pain in the neck. Of course I'll post pics when I can.
Also took a break from the back end to turn to the front. After much hacking on the Heidt's Mustang II suspension crossmember, the firewall and the floor, I now have the engine and 4L80e trans sitting where I want them and where I'll be able to get my driveshaft angles properly set. While the 4L80 is pretty long and I moved the engine/trans back a bit, the factory bench seat is still going to work fine.
I've been playing around with the Suspension Analyzer program to figure out how I'm going to reposition the steering assembly to make this work with the repositioned engine. I have a couple of position solutions that will allow me to keep the rack and pinion with good steering geometry... now it is just a matter of figuring out how I'm going to make the bracketry to relocate the rack and drop the outer tie rod mount points. While a headache, on the plus side I should end up having re-engineered it to have less bump steer and better ackermann geometry.
If the rack doesn't work out the other option was (and still could be) going back to the old steering box and just fabricating a new center link that will position the tie rods where they need to be.
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