Honestly, the factory motor can be recessed back several inches, this alone helps weight balance and chassis mods like kmember/a-arms with light weight wheels, and so forth are better ways to trim weight and will actually help weight distribution, launch, cornering dynamics etc.
I'm not sure the motor can be moved back any significant amount. There is very little clearance with the firewall.
I'd be willing to bet that an IRS cobra would pull faster laptimes than the same cobra with an sra swap even though the sra car would be lighter/"more planted on corner exit" assuming similar states of build with the rear suspensions (stock vs moddest or built up irs vs built up sra, don't nit pick the obvious please), exact same tires, brakes/pads etc, power et al just swapping rears.
Actually Maximum Motorsports did just what you posted here with an SRA and the IRS swapping as many of the suspension components from both suspension right down to the tires. The results was the IRS car was gaining about 5-10 seconds on the SRA car every lap. At the end of a 20 minute heat that would be pretty significant
No harm/foul, we're all pretty tech savvy with our cars and a lot of sra guys are very happy as they use the car more at the drag strip. The bunk about absolutely terrible ride etc is not true but yes an sra will be a little worse on broken pavement but remember that a built sra handles that better than a stock sra via much improved geometry/capability/dampening etc.
Almost everyone who does an SRA swap has very little-to-no interest in the cars cornering ability. If they did and have a clear understanding of suspension dynamics they would have never embarked on this swap. For a hard core drag racer this mod makes sense but that's about the only place it does.
IMO, built IRS has loads of potential but sra is more proven:1979-now to test/tune vs 99-04(and upto now obviously by guys still using irs).
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you suggesting an IRS is a relative new technology to the chassis engineers at Ford? Both set-ups use the same center section (diff). The engineers have a lot more option with respect to the suspension geometry when designing an IRS where the wheel position can and does change setting as the wheel moves in its travel and when the car pitches and rolls. An SRA? ............not so much. All Modern performance cars with exception of the Mustang uses an IRS. There is a reason for that.
Both can be fast, IRS is a little better for handling, but not as great for drag, sra great for drag and still good for handling.
I think most drivers would agree with this statement. I think a road racer would do a "double take". Can you imagine a Cobra R guy doing this swap? You would have to pry the IRS from his cold dead fingers :mj: