Advice on budget a/body bracket car suspension?

Whatever method you choose, the word budget to me means to fab your own stuff. I cobbled a set of leaf springs together for my old Dart and they are currently on my son's 67 Barracuda fastback that is set up for handling, but still hooks reasonably well.

What works with SS springs (and all factory HD rear leaves, for that matter) is the added stiffness forward of the axle. It was an inexpensive "traction bar", for lack of a better term. This was also the reason Chrysler used asymetrical (roughly 1/3 of the spring length in front of the axle) leaves while the rest of the automotive world used symetrical (1/2 the lenght in front of the axle) and suffered from wheel hop.

So, do what you want, but don't use the word budget while talking about purchasing a bunch of already fabbed parts.........