Torque Arm on F-body cars

[Rich Biebel]

My Firebird had a KTRE rear housing. It had a torque arm made by the original owner of the car or the chassis builder. It did attach to the differential using 4 bolts. I found those bolts loose on at least one occasion and one hole in the rear was stripped from loose fasteners. I heli-coil repaired it. The traction bar setup under there also cracked one of the brackets. These cars leave very hard and definately need everything checked under there often.....

[zracer305]

Originally Posted by Rich Biebel

My Firebird had a KTRE rear housing. It had a torque arm made by the original owner of the car or the chassis builder. It did attach to the differential using 4 bolts. I found those bolts loose on at least one occasion and one hole in the rear was stripped from loose fasteners. I heli-coil repaired it. The traction bar setup under there also cracked one of the brackets. These cars leave very hard and definately need everything checked under there often.....

It is my understanding that the Moser housing is the one that has the 4 bolt setup. Two that moumt from the top and two that mount from the bottom. The Strange housings use the two bolt-bolt through factory setup. During my resaerch for an F-Body housing I've talked to many racers who use the Moser housings and have expereinced bolts backing out even when using loctite. This is something that you have to keep an eye on and make it part of your routine maintaince. I have never heard of bolts backing out of housings that use the two bolt factory setup. It seems to me that this is a housing design flaw and not a Torque-Arm design flaw. I would say that close to 95% of the racecars that I've looked under use the S&W torque-arm so that's the one that I went with. I just don't like the round tube front crossmember and mounting point because I seen some of the round tube flex upward under load. I redesigned mine to use 2x2 square tubing and a custom front mount to accept the square tubing along with some additional ajustability.

[Rich Biebel]

I don't recall the man's name but KTRE was the company logo and he offered stronger replacement 12 bolt housings before most of the others out there today. I recall reading that someone took over his product line but don't recall who that was. Thru bolts would have definately been better. I had a stock but modified torque arm with a custom built round crossmember and adjustable stop arangement. Seemd to work well...Hook was almost always good. That car has 60'ed as quick as 1.32 at B/SA weight last month.

[Ken Haase]

The 'KT' stood for Kenny Thomas I believe. Mark Williams is selling those housings now, if I'm not mistaken.