Ted Brown
Member
Kits... why buy a kit? the MAIN reason to buy a good kit (a complete kit)
I believe the main reason that I made a set of plans and made a kit to sell, was to keep the customer from having to go through all that it takes to end up with a great looking and working chassis... How it that?? Well if you saw my first few chassis you would understand, as a good thought at/during the building stages, turned out all wrong at the driving stage, under curtain driving conditions... Then I had to make a change in the design... Well I made several over the first few years of driving my T Bucket most everyday, 7 to 10 hours every day & nights.
What I wanted to do was get all the bugs I could out of that crazy design of a T Bucket that I could...
Try and turn an impractical car, into a real driver... That is a hard task, as these small cars are made up from a lot of stolen parts from other cars, with a much different wheelbase - weight - top weight - width - angle of attack - You name it and a T Bucket is waaaay off course, as far as a great design for comfort and drive-ability... Like stopping - turning radius and effort - ride/soft, yet still handle - noise factor - safety in most every way - and sooo much more...
I LOVE these cars, I just hated the way it rode and handled at first, the looks made it worth all the bad points at first, but I could not make them to sell, being so far off base, so to speak..
That is the reason I decided to make the complete kit...
I even changed the name of my Company from Ted Brown Chassis, to CCR - California Custom Roadsters
I built many, many Drag Race chassis over the years that were a testing platform for my street chassis.
Setting up the (close to correct as possible) Chassis for everyday street driving, was much harder than I thought it would be, it took many miles of testing and lots of Horsepower (in the AG/S cars I built) to bend and break as much as I could, so that the buying customer would not have to go through all those troubles, and still it proves impossible to control all that other people can and will and DO to the chassis when/after they buy it and make changes to that design that worked great with the set up, as it was intended to be used...
Just like the factory cars of Ford and all the rest...
But, people will be people and want things different, their way, (as if it were Burger King) well as far as chassis changing, that will affect so many different end results, that now the car is back to having bad habits..!!
They are not really intended for as much HP as people want to try and run on the street, they were designed to LOOK like they have a ton of HP without really having that much... no real need, as they are too fast as they are with a stock engine of any type...
They are not built/designed for really fast driving (over the max speed limits)
I hear people talking about trying to set up (make changes to) main geometry to the chassis- steering and U-joint angles - braking and all the rest, that were all taken into consideration in the building of a complete kit....
To buy part of a kit from one Company and another part from another Company, is like putting Ford parts on a Chevy and hoping they will work fine, no way is this right as far as the chassis design was intended to do the right thing...
SO; I hope every Company out there that builds a "complete" kit, also makes up a disclaimer notice to the effect if it is changed from the original design, they are not responsible for any bad habits the chassis will develop. and it will...
Ted, of Ted Brown Chassis, as now I can build one off cars again, much more fun...
I believe the main reason that I made a set of plans and made a kit to sell, was to keep the customer from having to go through all that it takes to end up with a great looking and working chassis... How it that?? Well if you saw my first few chassis you would understand, as a good thought at/during the building stages, turned out all wrong at the driving stage, under curtain driving conditions... Then I had to make a change in the design... Well I made several over the first few years of driving my T Bucket most everyday, 7 to 10 hours every day & nights.
What I wanted to do was get all the bugs I could out of that crazy design of a T Bucket that I could...
Try and turn an impractical car, into a real driver... That is a hard task, as these small cars are made up from a lot of stolen parts from other cars, with a much different wheelbase - weight - top weight - width - angle of attack - You name it and a T Bucket is waaaay off course, as far as a great design for comfort and drive-ability... Like stopping - turning radius and effort - ride/soft, yet still handle - noise factor - safety in most every way - and sooo much more...
I LOVE these cars, I just hated the way it rode and handled at first, the looks made it worth all the bad points at first, but I could not make them to sell, being so far off base, so to speak..
That is the reason I decided to make the complete kit...
I even changed the name of my Company from Ted Brown Chassis, to CCR - California Custom Roadsters
I built many, many Drag Race chassis over the years that were a testing platform for my street chassis.
Setting up the (close to correct as possible) Chassis for everyday street driving, was much harder than I thought it would be, it took many miles of testing and lots of Horsepower (in the AG/S cars I built) to bend and break as much as I could, so that the buying customer would not have to go through all those troubles, and still it proves impossible to control all that other people can and will and DO to the chassis when/after they buy it and make changes to that design that worked great with the set up, as it was intended to be used...
Just like the factory cars of Ford and all the rest...
But, people will be people and want things different, their way, (as if it were Burger King) well as far as chassis changing, that will affect so many different end results, that now the car is back to having bad habits..!!
They are not really intended for as much HP as people want to try and run on the street, they were designed to LOOK like they have a ton of HP without really having that much... no real need, as they are too fast as they are with a stock engine of any type...
They are not built/designed for really fast driving (over the max speed limits)
I hear people talking about trying to set up (make changes to) main geometry to the chassis- steering and U-joint angles - braking and all the rest, that were all taken into consideration in the building of a complete kit....
To buy part of a kit from one Company and another part from another Company, is like putting Ford parts on a Chevy and hoping they will work fine, no way is this right as far as the chassis design was intended to do the right thing...
SO; I hope every Company out there that builds a "complete" kit, also makes up a disclaimer notice to the effect if it is changed from the original design, they are not responsible for any bad habits the chassis will develop. and it will...
Ted, of Ted Brown Chassis, as now I can build one off cars again, much more fun...