by Wayne Scraba
Photos by Wayne Scraba
9/7/04

Plenty of early passenger cars used leaf springs on the rear. That makes bolting on rear traction devices pretty simple. Unfortunately, simple doesn’t necessarily mean adjustable. And in some cases, simple doesn’t always work that well either—especiaslly if your car has some heat under the hood.

The Cal-Tracs bar is designed to operate in a manner different than a slapper bar. The idea is to load the spring, and then transfer the weight from the front to the rear of the car. Installation is a basic bolt in, however springs and shocks definitely must be tailored to the application.

One piece of equipment that might change all of that is the Cal-Tracs bar. This piece has seen use on a number of NHRA-legal stockers, has seen great success on John Calvert’s own Super Stock Mustang and is used regularly on a host of fastest street cars and other quick leaf spring applications.

In John Calvert’s case, talk about playing with a stacked deck: Amidst a sea of 4-link, 14-inch wide X 33-inch tall tired, automatic transmission Super Stock/GT cars Calvert campaigns a stick shift stocker chassis—complete with itsy-bitsy 9” slicks. But the combination has been overwhelmingly successful, with a string of national event wins (he was also the Winston World Champ in stock eliminator in 1991). What makes the car tick? It’s really not a complex piece. Instead, it’s a basic stock eliminator chassis that John Calvert began class racing with over two decades ago (familiarity with a car obviously has its merits).

At the rear of the bar (under the spring seat) you’ll find this is the rod end arrangement. The chrome moly tube simply attaches to the spring seat in this fashion. Both of the rod ends on each bar are high end Aurora pieces.	The spring seat is designed so that the shocks can be mounted on either side of the bar. If the shock mounts on your car are staggered (one shock ahead of the axle, one behind it) the bar will still work.