Can an older chassis be competitive?

[Cranky]

Can an older chassis, with updates, say a raised rail and raised cross member be competitive? If the time is taken to engineer the front suspension and a decent set of shocks can you make an older car competitive? Is it worth the time if you don't have the money for a new chassis? We are talking a 10-12 year old chassis!

[doyle hargraves]

To run Lucas probably not. To run local crate shows absolutely

[doyle hargraves]

See a ton of blue/ gray rockets and mastersbuilts for sale really cheap. Plenty good cars for weekly local shows and some are not that old

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

Can an older chassis, with updates, say a raised rail and raised cross member be competitive? If the time is taken to engineer the front suspension and a decent set of shocks can you make an older car competitive? Is it worth the time if you don't have the money for a new chassis? We are talking a 10-12 year old chassis!

If you put the pickup points in the right place and valve the shocks right, the car doesn't know it's age.

If you made it fit a modern car jig and got the shocks right, Davenport could win the world 100 with it.

[Jking24]

10-12 maybe a little too old not saying it's not possible but i would be in the 4-8 year range mainly because older chassis flexed hence cracked alot more and you can just only fix something so many times. I don't really know masterbilts.14 and 15 rockets were pretty good peices and are going for super fair prices especially with the xr's starting to come down a decent bit this off season

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

JKing brings up the one caveat. If it's worn out and welded up everywhere, it's a waste of time. If not, I would advise stiffening the car up too.

[billetbirdcage]

And is it straight to start with, before someone starts updating it. Assuming updates are not being done on a jig.

[Cranky]

Thanks for the replies gentlemen, I will be doing the updates myself on a surface plate. As far as I can tell the car is straight currently. To far away to take chassis to the original builder or a dealer (7-10 hours). Im planning to order the raised cross member kit, i'm going to raise the right rail the way some of you had specified in another post with straightening out the bottom bend. Im going to put some of the stiffening bars in the front clip area behind the filler panel, lighten her up as much as possible and let her eat. I appreciate the opinions.

[Krooser]

I like the way you think

[RW57]

That's what's so fun taking someone else's throwaway and making it work .One thing mentioned and I fully agree stiffen the crap out of an older car.

[davis2902]

JKing brings up the one caveat. If it's worn out and welded up everywhere, it's a waste of time. If not, I would advise stiffening the car up too.

Sheppard's XR1 house car, ('17 model I think) has been welded up more times than I can count. Torsional stiffness is sometimes over rated.

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

Sheppard's XR1 house car, ('17 model I think) has been welded up more times than I can count. Torsional stiffness is sometimes over rated.

It's been damaged and fixed. Have you ever raced a car that cracks in critical places nearly every race? I have. They go to crap. You zip it back up and it's ok until the next time. It's more trouble than it's worth.