Actually I havnt talked to john at all about the suspension. Its all my idea.
The torque arm doesnt mount to the transmission i have going it in. Making a trailing arm mount on the transmission crossmember might work, if it doesnt physically hit the larger dia and slightly longer tailshaft on the 4l80… if it hits, the mount needs to be fixed farther back under the car, which means shorter/reworked tq arm. TQ arm doesnt mount to the ford 8.8 which will at some point be under the car.
shorter trailing arms must have a more precise mounting location for the forward fixture point becasue of the increased swing on the axle from the shorter arm. Also that mounting point is going to be higher than stock, the closer it is to the rear end (to maintain the stock instant center).
$600 for a tq arm relocation and new arm is not in the budget, then I still need to deal with mounting it to another rear end.
Lastly, any torque arm is EXACTLY the same as a “ladder bar”. 3 fixture points (on on chassis and 2 on axle) that none of which on the bars themselves can physically change. Only difference is a ladder bar setup uses 2 “tq arms” under the car.
The key to the entire equation is the instant center point. The IC is the single intersection point from the 2 axle mounting points. No matter if its a tq arm, ladder bar or a 4 link design. The placement of the IC VS the center of gravity determines the anti-squat of the car when its launched or under braking.
The country bumpkins that blindly add a piece of pipe and 2 brackets to the axle and the stock lower control arm to make the “ladder bars” are the reason people think they fail… BECASUE THEY DO… becasue they didnt design it right!
I am going to design the ladder bars to match the stock instant center location. See my diagram. The top is the imaginary tq arm and the blue dot is the IC. Bottom is the same IC dot/location, with the ladder bar. Only handling character differences will be very slight due to the over all length of the suspension being shorter.
On paper, the suspension works. I made measurements and will pump them into suspension calculators to verify my assumptions. When I search for ideas, I dont search for “does XXXX work for XXXX car” and look for Joe blow said it works great and Jim blow said he stuffed it in the wall… I search for “Suspension concepts 101” and do my homework. The same physics can be applied to any car under the sun, make and model dont really have much to do with it.