During the 1987 rebuild, a ZF 5-spd transaxle was installed and the Corvair rear suspension was replaced with my own design. I had some ideas on what style IRS I was planning to use, but I needed a cost effective solution for the rear uprights.
In the early-to-mid-80’s, there was a kit car builder located in the mid-west called Marauder Cars (A.K.A. Marauder & Co.). They specialized in mid-engine replicas of race cars like the Lola T70. In one of their brochures it appeared they had created rear uprights that incorporated the C3 Corvette cast iron hub carrier. This seemed like a cool idea as the Corvette rear spindle was clearly strong enough for my needs and should be easy to find.
What did seem a bit unorthodox in the brochure picture was that the hub carrier and the 4-piston Corvette brake caliper were positioned upside-down. The caliper ended up at the bottom of the upright, which would make bleeding the brakes difficult. But if it worked for them, I was confident I could do the same thing. And it did work fine for many years. It was however, a pain in the neck whenever the brakes needed to be bled. The caliper had to be unbolted and positioned so that the bleeder port was at the highest point.
At the 2012 rebuild, I decided this needed to be corrected. It looked stupid and I didn’t like having to remove the caliper for bleeding. I came up with a simple solution to have the caliper mount in the correct position. I cut the exting cast iron arm off the hub carrier and welded up a new mounting point from tube steel for the top lateral link.
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