Good points, Evan. Recently, I bought a very heavy duty IFS system that had been scavenged out of a badly butchered stovebolt frame before the rest of it went to the scrappers. I got it, plus a couple of stock control arms and a rack & pinion steering gear for barely above scrap iron price. It's going to be a good beginning for a non-stovebolt project I'm working on, and it will save me a pile of money compared to building something similar from scratch. I'll modify it to fit my needs. Expecting a perfect fit from any add-on suspension system doesn't make good nonsense, and the people who do that probably don't have any business attempting the project in the first place.
Starting with a pile of steel tubing and ending up with a dirt track race car frame is fun. Those projects will never see a single mile on a public road, however, and the guys who go around in circles and think they're "big wheels" are all out there voluntarily. If something breaks, we hope we're going to survive the crash, and we're going to do it differently the next time. We also have emergency crews available within a few seconds to rescue us. Some of the "resto-mod" vehicles I've done pre-purchase inspections on were in such dangerous shape that I refused to do the road test the assignment required.
I'm all for pushing the envelope, performance-wise. Just don't make the soccer mom with a minivan full of kids the victim of a bad weld or a poorly engineered modification when something breaks.
Jerry
