I have been racing my 78 Fairmont 2 door sedan for 30 years now, always with a 390/428/427 FE engines, but last year I swapped out the 427 FE for a 331 SBF, retaining the Jerico 4 speed. Between installing a tubular K member (but retaining the factory type coil springs), plus going from the iron headed FE to aluminum head small block, over 200 pounds came off the nose. The car has had 90/10 Lakewood struts up front, and I installed new Moog front 4 cyl coils while I did the swap. The nose sat kinda high, but I ran it all last year that way, it was wheelstanding pretty high, but controlable (rear bumper about 1 inch from touching the track, 1.36 60 foot), and with the nose high, it landed nice and smooth.
Anyhow, over the winter, we cut the front coils almost a full coil, it sits much nicer now, but since I will now have more up travel, plus less down travel, I was concerned about even higher wheelstands, and harder landings. So I just replaced the old Lakewood struts with a pair of Strange single adjustable struts. The Strange struts are about an inch less travel than the Lakewoods, so that may help keep the nose from getting too high, but wondering if any of you guys are using the Strange struts, and how much differance you have found the adjustments make. They have 11 positions, I set them near the middle (#5), hopefully I get enough passes in this weekend to "sneak up" on a good compromise with the struts. Anybody made a direct comparison between the Lakewood 90/10s and the Strange single adjustables? Weather for this weekend is looking terrific!
This is typical of how the Fairmont left with the heavy FE engine (428 at that time) , the small block carried them out a fair bit higher, much further (past the 60 foot beams a few times), and lands much smoother, but with the nose lower now, time will tell.
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