L/60s , air shocks , Lakewood traction bars , Thrush mufflers. Fucking life was good! You should have been there.
Back in northern Ohio in the late '70's, we just HAD to have shackles and "keep on Truckin' " floor mats.
Had a 69 Olds 442 back in the 70's jacked way up. Air shocks, N60 tires and a set of Keystones, 8 track player, and CB radio and you were good to go......................
It was also the era of putting a Hurst Ram Rod shifter in your car, and hacking out half of the transmission hump in the process.
We used to call those cars billy rides in my area. My 67 Nova when I got it had a later wider 12 bolt Nova rearend, slapper bars and airshocks to keep the tires from rubbing. The rear end was painted metallic red. It also had a big hole in the hood that would clear a tunnel ram. It surprisingly had a nice tastefully done interior.
There is alot we took to extreme in the sixties. But the hot setup was raise the car up level a few inches ( shackles, taller coils or or neopreme spacers from your Chevy dealer and ball joint spacers to get the tires square to the ground. bigger tires, convert to a 4 speed (most the automatics were 2 speed and wouldn't hold up) No 4 doors or rust, but primer was cool. The undercarriage has clean and painted black with a chrome cover if you had one. Girl in the middle of your bench seat, turn up the AM radio with the under dash reverb, a couple extra speakers on the deck. Life was good!
The nice thing about '67 Caprices were the coil springs in back. No expensive long shackles needed. Just bang some 2x4 pieces into the coils to jack up the back. Rode a bit stiff but thats the trade off to have a cool car.
We put 12" on a 59 Ford once, 6 cyl. car, friend would go backwards about 10 mph when no one was looking, put i into 1st and pop the clutch...he imagined he had a 427,ha,ha...kids. Frank Kunkel
this has probably been already been covered here , but i,m going to say it anyway. I remember that in the 40,s customs were lowered in rear [by whatever method was easiast, coils, shackles etc] as were some rods. The Rake was copied from rodders for the look of the lakes cars, which used tall rear tires for higher gearing. Generally these mods have continued to today, as did the low riders which I recall as low in the back and later, lowered all the way around. The shackles were used to lower an raise rear ends way back, specifically the rear which we would 'flip' the shackles from the hanging stock ones, to raised, depended on what was wanted. rodders n customs liked the racer look, which later included the mag wheels phase. We oldtimers have done a lot of screwy things and its a wonder we survived the old daze.just my cents worth.
Yep 20 or 30 years from now I can just read it on the H.A.M.B. "What were all those people thinking. I bet that handled like crap." That's what I was thinking when I read all the negative responses. How many really did it and don't want to admit to it. Mine was a roach clip with a incense burner hanging off it. Still have it somewhere. (Not hanging from a rear view mirror. Or anywhere else actually.) Oh ya the 8 track. By the way I did my 66 mustang with hangers and air shocks. Never seemed to effect the handling at all. Maybe I didn't have it jacked up enough. Damn I wish I still had that car.
As I remember, most of the cars that were jacked up this way didnt make enough power to need any traction help. Can you imagine the body roll/lean if you ever did get one sideways? Coming from a town with a Naval Shipyard, we called this look a Swabbie Rake... lots of the sailors set their cars up this way. Good old Torque twisters...mine left nice dark black marks, but didnt do much for traction! No one has mentioned the cheapo chrome slapper bars with the side to side chrome brace that didnt do anything but reflect the headlites of the car behind you...or that light refractive prism tape everybody used to detail their car.
oddly enough there is a sub culture of guys in japan who take shit liek that to the extreme... its called bozozoku... totally ridiculous!
Bought a 69 mach 1 in the early 70's, the ass end was sky high. They had the rearend mounted below the springs and a pair of 8 inch shackles. The front was stock height. Looked like you were staring at the pavement while driving it. Also had all the racing stickers and stick on lace panels. The best part was the bright red extra long shag carpet... The kid I bought it from just stood and stared at it in disbelief when he seen all his hard work gone...
74 Nova, shackles were the first thing I bought for that car. N-50 tires on 15x10 Cragars, air shocks, hood pins, Hurst slap shifter, chrome rearend cover. Quarter windows covered with all the speed parts I bought.....Best times of my life. I still dig some of that stuff and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
Around here, the tires to have were Kelly Springfields. They were really cheap, and man what a smoke show.
Damn, those are some long-ass shackles an'shit. (That's how we talked in the '70s in the east bay. Richmond, to be exact. We added "an'shit" to everything we said.)
Yeah, but unfortunately, so was my high school net worth! I used to regularly give a nerdy kid that lived out of town a ride to the dance/party/whatever, because his parents had one of those farm use gas tanks with a hand driven pump, and he'd gladly crank 10 to 15 gallons into my tank for a ride that took all of ten minutes out of my life.
or florescent orange thank god I managed to resist the fad of long shackles and air shock when they were popular,,, The way I drove back then I would have probably killed myself
I remember gas at 24 cents a gallon. My father had a gas station and there were gas stations about every block, 3 at the most in some places and if one station dropped there price by a penny so did everyone else. We would walk out to the street and look down it to see the other prices. They were called gas wars back then among the station owners.
suprised to see that no one has mentioned the movie HIGH RIDERS, Its a bitchin late 70s movie pretty much set up like a 70s cheap biker movie but with jacked up cars, My buddy has a 70 duster he drove in high school, 383, manual drum brakes, bright orange, with steelies in the front, wide vectors and white letter tires in the rear, ten inch shackles and iar shocks, Funny thing is that we graduated high school in 2001, ha
Ha! I forgot the roach clips with all the feathers hanging off them! My '59 chevy pickup had Polyglas GT's on the front (F60's if I remember correctly) and 31-12.50-15's on the back, got some decent rake with that. Handled funky but it sure looked cool! I also put a "Wynn" sticker on the air cleaner, thought that was the stuff right there!
If you believed all of the decals I put on the quarter windows of my '57 (first car), it was running about $3000 worth of speed equipment.
I watched the movie HIGH RIDERS awhile back, and i swear you can see the oil pan from behind the car during a chase scene LOL....great low budget movie.
Us guys with shoebox Fords had it easy. Get 2 bumper jacks, put them on the back bumper and jack it up until the rear tires were at least 6 inches off the ground. The stock shackles on the rear of the spring were mounted with the spring eye on top. After we got it jacked up, we'd crawl under it, put a crowbar into the shackle from the bottom and give it a good pull. After a couple of tries, the shackle would "over-center" and the spring eye would be on the bottom. Instant 6" or so raise. This was the late fifties, so we'd go to the junk yard and buy a pair of used 8:20x 15 tires, and it was an instant rake. If your springs were good, it was stable and looked great. It's a wonder we weren't badly hurt or even killed pulling this trick. Oh yeah, I went out to the shop and checked; both of my 8 tracks cases have the faux alligator skin. What I am saving them for I have no idea; the last 8 track player I had was in a '79 Ranchero I sold 10 years ago. I have heard that the right tapes (Beach Boys, etc.) are worth a bunch to some of the muscle car guys.
i recomend High Riders for any car movie collection, not the best movie, but worth a watch, wacky muscle cars and boobs, what else do ya need?
The Jalopy Journal
