Rick Jones reveals the NEW DOUBLE A-ARM FRONT SUSPENSION CONFIGURATION

In the cloak and dagger world of Pro Stock technology, secrets are a way of life.

The recently new open world of Pro Stock has inspired chassis builder Rick Jones to let the cat out of the bag on his new state secret.

Three years ago, Jones decided he needed to do something to step out of his comfort zone in building a Pro Stocker from his chassis factory in Galesburg, Ill.

The founder of RJ Race Cars and Quarter-Max Chassis & Racing Components decided the time had come to revolutionize front-end chassis design away from the proven method of decades.

What makes this car better than the others?

"The geometry in the front suspension," said Jones. "It’s something that we’ve been pretty top secret about for a long time. Since NHRA made us turn our cars around in the pit area, everybody can see it now. They made us uncover the car, and nobody knew we had it, well very few people knew we had it but now with the cars turned around and no covers, everybody can see it. I have no problem with NHRA doing this, in fact I think it has made a better fan experience towards Pro Stock."

The new car has no struts. There was nothing wrong with struts, Jones admits; it's just that he wanted to chart a different path. Together with son Rickie and chassis specialist JJ Coe, they began the arduous process of developing a new front suspension without struts.

"We’ve been using struts in Pro Stock since the early 1970s, but we thought we’d try and do something better," said Jones. "We designed a double a-arm front suspension, as they call it, it’s nothing new, but it is new in this application. They’ve actually been running in stock vehicles for many years."

Jones believed if this design was good enough for street cars for the last five decades, it might be worth a try on the strip in a similar configuration.

"We thought the double a-arm front suspension would be something new that we could try to make the cars handle better going down the race track," said Jones.

Jones’ new front end is solely on the car currently driven by Erica Enders and campaigned by Elite Motorsports. It leads the point standings presently.

"We started about a year ago to build this new car, actually a year ago this past summer and had it ready to go this winter," said Jones. "We ran it at Gainesville and didn’t do so well, didn’t have anything to do with the car it was just the way we were racing it. We got our old car back out, our championship car, and we didn’t do any better. We went to Charlotte and darn near didn’t qualify."

Jones and the Elite team remained on Monday after Charlotte, made some adjustments to the old car as well as the idle new car, and then brought it back out in Houston. With Richard Freeman behind the wheel of the new car, it did well and then the decision was made to put Erica back behind the wheel. It has since been driven to five national event victories.

Though the new combination appears to be working just fine, Jones said it is clearly a work in progress.

"We are trying different shock combinations, and it’s getting better all the time so it’s something that’s really nice and cool, and it’s definitely going to be the future," said Jones.

Right now Jones said the new combination offers more adjustments than with the previous configuration with a shock on each side.

"There are a lot of things you can do with shock valving and spring rates to get the car a lot smoother, it goes over the bumps a lot better, down bumpy tracks, it’s just smooth and it drives real nice," said Jones. "It’s just stuff that we’ve been working on, but nobody’s really talked about it at this point."

Jones said at this point he has nearly $250,000 worth of investment taking this project from a vision to reality. Once his secret became public knowledge he said a few customers have inquired but they understand this kind of a project will take time to implement.

"I’m real comfortable with it more than anything out there, but we’re just trying to get better with it and perfect the shock package the whole time," said Jones.

Erica, Jones said, loved the new front-end.

"We told her just to go out there, let the clutch out, and let's see what it does," Jones said with a smile. "Being the good sport Erica is, she did it and came back saying she loved it, and could tell a difference."

The difference is very evident when a car wheelstands.

"It’s actually real smooth when it comes down off the wheelstand," Jones explained. "It doesn’t bounce around a lot like it did before. It’s just real smooth, and we can control a lot of things with it to make that better than what we had before with struts."

Jones credits Adam Lambert from Precision Racing Suspension and also Penske Racing Shocks as a major assistance in bringing the new front end into existence.

"The engineering part of it is the hard part," Jones said. "We spent countless hours just trying to figure that out, but now it’s really rewarding to have it at the race track and see it winning races and doing well. We’re excited about it. I think it’s going to be the future of the sport again.

"It’s kind of the way race cars started, even in the 1960s. Stock Camaros and Chevelles and all that, double a-arm suspension. Once they went to the struts, I thought they were making them simple in the early 1970s, and they’ve been using them ever since. You just want to try something new. Most forms of motorsports, you know, NASCAR and all the rest of the road racing, they have A-arm front suspension so I thought that’s maybe something that we can benefit on our cars, and so far it’s been really good. That’s what we like about our program with Elite Motorsports and RJ Race Cars, we can have everything in-house and try new stuff and make our program and business better at the same time."