Since buying the Aspen, I've not had a lot of time to pay attention to it. We bought a house and moved, remodeled the garage at the new house so I can comfortably work out of it, and a bunch of little things around the new house. In the meantime I did a few small things such as locating some needed Aspen specific parts like good taillights, some quarter window louvers, a grille, etc. Most of the time I spent on the car was investigating what to do about the car's front suspension. The factory transverse torsion bar front suspension isn't some of Chrysler's best engineering and is nothing but one compromise after another. I looked at a bunch of options and decided the best course of action was to cut the entire front off of the car and replace everything forward the firewall.

My intention was to use a road race front frame from Howe Racing Products that is used on the TA2 Trans Am series cars they offer. Friday I was pulling everything together to place the order to Howe for the front frame, control arms, spindles, and hubs but their website was having issues and I was having troubles pulling together the P/Ns and prices I needed. While i was waiting for a page to load, I popped open another tab and started cruising E-Bay's race cars for sale when I stumbled upon this:







What it is is a Laughlin short track chassis that was run as a NASCAR North Series car (NASCAR North is a ladder series that uses basicly the Nationwide Series Rules with less expensive bodies and more restrictive engine rules). It's a complete roller so it has suspension, brakes, rear end, and steering. The rear end is a quick change. The track width is just a half inch wider than the Aspen's stock track width and has a 105" wheelbase (The Aspen is 108"). All this for an opening bid just $200 more than I was getting ready to spend with Howe and it was a no reserve auction. So I bid and at 3pm today I won that auction so the Aspen will be getting a complete Laughlin chassis!