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Hi Carlton, A lot of this has been hashed out over the years. There are some helpful stickies available in the FAQs for selecting damper and spring rates that you may want to refer to. Before you get too far into recommendations about springs, etc., would you tell us what you intend to use this car for (track only, dual purpose, autox, street, etc.) as this will help give you better recommendations. It would also be helpful to know what you intend to use for tires, as this is one of the most important factors to know. Low-profile radials will require softer springs than a higher sidewall racing tire (such as a slick, R-compound, or HP 200 TW). The more grip the tires can generate, the higher the spring rate needed to be able to deal with the forces that take up suspension travel. I'd agree with Mike Maier's criticisms of the Apex upper A-arm on the front suspension. It is going to always limit the amount of available suspension travel that can be used. With regards to how much travel you need, that will depend a lot on tires and the use of the car. On my autoX/hillclimb 240 that weighed 1850 or 2050, depending on class, I ran Hoosier bias-ply racing slicks and some of their radial slicks. The spring rates I typically used were 400 to 600 lbs/in on the front and 400 to 550 lbs/in on the rear. This car was droop limited, and front suspension travel on the roughest hill was typically less than 2.75 inches in the front and 3.5 inches in the rear. I experimented with softer and stiffer rates but found this range worked best. A friend's street legal dual-purpose car running on 200 TW or R comp low-profile tires weighed 2400+ (LS and T-56). This car was happier with 375 on 450 spring rates. It was also droop limited and I found out how horrible this made the car ride on normal street drives. So if you go down this path I'd recommend a quick disconnect when not needing the limited travel. My personal feelings on the Apex upper a-arm are that it should be about 7 inches long to get adequate travel. On my a-arm mock ups, the only reliable way I could see doing this was to use holes or pockets on the inner fender that allowed moving the inner pickup to the center of the frame rail. Then it looks more like a '90s to 2000s Mustang strut to a-arm conversion. The parts to do this are that bad if you use circle track components, and you can source used parts from eBay for trying out different ideas. This requires you to have access to fab equipment, so if you don't, this isn't a road to go down. Cary

Spoke to Mike Maier today seeing as the front suspension is most similar to that of an old Mustang. I wish I could write notes faster because holy hell that man is a wealth of knowledge. Suggested the reason for high spring rates is to prevent the upper control arm from camming over (poor arm design) and that the 3.5" of travel is definitely not enough for a road racing/track car (burms). Looks like my next steps are installing an adjustable upper ball joint that can move up/down to change the coilover angle and shock pot it at ride height looking for the lowest load value. If no substantial gains can be made there it's either back to the drawing board to make a push/pull rod cantilever or cut out the shock towers entirely and try to copy MMI's own Mod 2 strut tower modifications as well as new control arm(s) to gain the ability to mount a full length shock to the lower wishbone. This is becoming more and more of a fully custom project by the day.