Les Ritchey (rip) used "Gold Seal Traction Masters" on his early Galaxie race cars BUT the bar went to the back of the car. This again put the bar in tension. He promoted the heck out of them.It is "my" opinion the direction was changed for "ease of installation" purposes.
Randy
I'm curious as to the "rest-of-the-story", as I'm having trouble understanding how this would function with the shackle also at the rear, at least this being in the original O.E. installation?
At the typical position forward the bar does limit the function of the forward section of the spring "some" as even though the spring eye is a semi-rigid mounting (the bushing allowing some motion) but the flattening of the arch of the spring causes the differential to move rearward, though this now is now being limited somewhat as the result of the rigid bar being attached to the differential housing and the vehicles' floor pan (or what ever, same as the leaf) puts the relationship to the springs' intentions into a bind. And as the leaf spring is compressed with the reduction in the arch, both fore and aft of the axle, with this result inevitably the leaf increases in its' straight-line length, hence the implementation of the shackle as a pivot at the rear.
But with the bar attached to rear?
Not saying it wasn't done, nor that I haven't seen some strange engineering implementations actually work, and I see where there are some possible effects, perhaps positive and negative depending of intention, but there must be more to it, to have it be "good engineering"?
Reminds me of a road race customer we had years ago, a "real" rocket engineer (he would contact the State of Florida to report businesses which used the word "engineer" in the name title, as it's not permitted unless someone in the company is truly a degreed engineer), and he "re-engineered" the SN95 chassis with shared forward and rearward facing control arms (don't ask!
)! He presented his "engineering" plans to me asking my opinion (boy was that ever a mistake!
) But he was probably really just gloating his engineering prowess), I looked at him and said: man........just step back a minute and look at it again, I don't think that's gonna work! Well, perhaps I'm not the most tactful speaker, and often have an opinion (right or wrong), but my statement didn't go over well; but a few months latter he showed up in our shop after a few races with examples of broken driveshafts, transmission tailshaft housings, transmission cases with the bellhousing mounting ears ripped off, along with control arm mountings failure, wondering if we had any ideas why he was experiences such? Well............
Scott.