Do-It-Yourself High Performance Car Mods

The Chassis and Chassis Braces

There are several ways to build a chassis, the car’s basic structure. The earliest cars used a framework to connect the suspension and drivetrain together, with a body bolted to the frame. This full-frame construction is very rare today, mostly used on trucks. Most cars today use unibody construction, where the body panels (usually the inner fenders, floorpan, roof, door frames, trunk floor, and rear fenders) carry the weight of the car directly. Some unibody cars also use subframes—small frameworks to support the engine and suspension—at each end. Unibody construction first became popular in the ’60s, appearing on such classics as the first Mustangs. A well-designed unibody can often be stiffer than a full frame, ...