Resurrecting an old sport-mod chassis as a Ratrod

[nitrojunkie78]

Hey guys. I'm in the middle of a resto/mod of a '65 Chevy stepside. Most parts got swapped out, so I had a nifty pile of stock parts that I thought would make a decent ratrod, (straight-6 engine, manual brake assembly, steering column w/ manual gearbox, 4.56 rear end, etc.). I stumbled across the chassis shown below for $200. Couldn't pass it up. I've been told that it looks like an older model Flexi-Flyer, but do not know for sure. My questions revolve mainly around suspension setup for street use, since I plan to register this as an "assembled vehicle" once I have all the lighting, wipers, and other required equipment installed. The front end has all of the the steering, brakes, hubs and control arms (tubular uppers and I believe chevelle lowers). I plan to put weight jacks back in it and I'll be adding front shocks and a sway-bar to it as well. 1. Should I spend the extra $ on swiveling weight jacks? Or just go with standard? 2. I see the springs should be 5.5" diameter, what uncompressed length would you guess though? I guess that kinda depends on the next question...3. What is a good front spring rate for street use? Presumably a fair bit softer than for the track? The rear end is more of a blank canvas. I see a lot of ways to set it up: 4-link, ladder-bar, 3-link (by that I mean 2-link with a torque rod)... How would you set it up for the street? The 3 link seems to be the cheapest way, since I can just buy the rod ends and fab up everything else. I'll need to fab up a panhard bar in this fashion anyway. Looks like 3-link was the intended setup, I'm guessing the mount near the battery box was for the torque rod. 4. springs and shocks... I like the weight-jack like adjustability of coilovers, just not the cost. Looks like that was what it was set up for though. Any strong opinions for or against coilovers? Any better options?5. Any reason not to go the 3-link route? 6. Assuming I go 3-link, what angles would you guess for the links for street use? I'll have total flexibility in where all the links connect to the rear end, so advice in where to place them would be useful too. 7. Here again we have the question of spring rate, convoluted with the issue of spring mount angle... How diagonal should the coilovers be mounted (i.e. mounts to rear end being further apart than mounts to chassis), and what rear spring-rates would you guess for the street? Any tricks to keep cost down here?8. rear sway bar... Pretty simple addition, but should I even bother? Thanks in advance for the help guys. I've been a racing fan for a while, but know absolutely nothing about setting up a car. I do have a Ph.D in physics (no joke) so I can do the math but it's far less useful than practical experience here.

[nitrojunkie78]

Sorry for the lack of line breaks... They showed up fine in the preview, but the system apparently ate them during posting.