The progress has slowed a bit due to the unseasonably warm weather causing the 2012 spring rush in the shop to be a bit busier than normal. This has had the techs very busy on customer’s cars.

We are building a custom fan shroud for the Taurus fan and once it is done the Hearse will be on the dyno. This will most likely be completely by the time you are reading this.

We have still made a lot of progress with the help of Lance and Shane. We addressed the suspension to get the car lower for both appearance and stability via Eibach lowering springs. We also wanted to further address handling so we chose sway bars from Frederico which are a massive 1 3/8 Front and 1 ½ Rear http://fredericoperformance.com. We are sure the Hearse will handle quite well.

The next area was shocks and we chose Strange Engineering single adjustable fronts and double adjustable rears. The final step was rear control arms to get pinion angle in order as well as replace worn bushings. We looked to Metco for a set of their adjustable uppers and alum lowers. http://metcomotorsports.com/proddetail.asp?prod=MCA0002&cat=112 .

We chose to add Air Lift air bags to the rear springs for the sake of leveling out the car in the case of hauling some extra weight in the form of a casket.

We found that once the suspension was in order we had some tire to wheel well clearance issues. This was due to the fiberglass quarters of the Hearse conversion being different. We took some measurements and went to work cutting, trimming and massaging the inner wheel wells and then resealing the body. We now have the hearse sitting low without any tire clearance issues.

The wheel wells have since been sealed and the wheel wells recoated.

The next area of concern was getting a properly designed driveshaft for the car. The driveshaft is rather long due to the length of the Hearse and without a proper shaft the results could be catastrophic. We called upon our friends at the Drive Shaft Shop and they put us into a 3 ¾ Carbon Fiber shaft.

The downpipe is the next area to tackle and the fabrication is partially done for the short race piece. This consisted of cutting and plating the cross member to allow us to tuck the 4” downpipe nicely for plenty of ground clearance. We will build a street version which will simply install via v-band clamps and incorporate a muffler. This will be longer and dump near the rear axle to be a bit tamer for cruising.