Old picture of #28 Jimmy Mars early in his career ---------------- Thought I'd share.

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

My first car was a TCB with cantilever rear suspension (1986); in '87 went to a underslung Rayburn on a z-link. Never really got the TCB to go in the slick, Rayburn was a much better car until I destroyed it. Looking a wheel rates, the cantilever was a great idea, really allowed for fine tuning with the spring combinations and mounting points.Crazy all the combos we have seen over the years, remember the double right rear coil over phase?

Yes. I ran the double rr some.

[over4T]

EvelB7, Was your TCB one of the ones with the high mounted transverse leaf spring on the front end? Mark Welsh, one of the West's really talented drivers of that era, had one and said the same thing, that he struggled in the slick with it. Fortunately most of the tracks out here then were on the heavy side and he killed them for a couple of years with his Buggy. Very innovative cars.

[EvelB7]

EvelB7, Was your TCB one of the ones with the high mounted transverse leaf spring on the front end? Mark Welsh, one of the West's really talented drivers of that era, had one and said the same thing, that he struggled in the slick with it. Fortunately most of the tracks out here then were on the heavy side and he killed them for a couple of years with his Buggy. Very innovative cars.

No, mine was a conventional strut front end. It did have the bolt on clip-NASCAR thinks they invented it but old Gary Oliver beat them by almost 40 years! Car was very good in the wet, but the Iowa tracks we raced at didn't stay hooked up for long so it struggled come feature time. Always felt the thing was just to stiff and had way to narrow of a tuning range. Funny thing is I grew up not far from Tri City Buggy; when I moved south I was not far from where Gary moved and changed name to Tri County Buggy. He quit focusing on the dirt and did more with pavement in his mid and late years.

[billetbirdcage]

Crazy all the combos we have seen over the years, remember the double right rear coil over phase?

Hard for me to remember the exact amount but we won 5 or 6 MLRA races with the double RR and think one of them was the precursor to the silver dollar nationals when it was the "alphabet soup race" with MLRA, WDRL, NCRA, MARS, and ETC where it typically had 60 to 75 cars

[Henry Every]

The first car I ever worked on in 86' was a Frank McClendon creation(Custom Chassis) with reverse canti-lever, underslung both front and rear(like a sprint car) with 32" equal spaced frame rails, 2x2. We then tried one of his 3 link designs with a 34" spaced rails.

[jog49]

Ah, Skip Arp! Haven't heard his name in a long time. Great guy!