Anybody running the RMS AlterKation? Was it really worth the cost?
I wonder if anyone has gotten some back to back seat time between a prepped car with a borgeson box and an Alterkation car. Personally, my main grip with the basic handling feel in my car is the sloppy/overpowered steering. And I wonder if losing that sloppyness is what impresses the people who switch?
I think the biggest reason people swap is because they don't have any seat time in a torsion bar car that's been set up properly. People drive around with the stock worn out suspension, worn out steering, and a bad (stock) alignment and assume nothing that awful can be saved. And then they switch from worn out stock suspension to a coilover conversion and are amazed in the change. But really the difference between a rebuilt and properly set up torsion bar car and the coilover conversions is just as big.
The steering is really the one thing you can't replicate with the torsion bar set up. Even the Borgeson is a worm and recirculating ball steering box, so, it will not feel like rack and pinion steering. But that's all it is, feel. Performance wise it's just as capable.
But getting rid of the stock power steering makes a huge difference. Heck even just changing the amount of boost provided by the stock power steering makes a big difference, you can do that just by shimming the power steering pump valve to reduce the pressure a bit. On my Challenger, when I went to 275/40/17's up front and cranked the positive caster up to +5* it made a big difference in just the feel of the steering, even with the vaguely worn out stock steering box and no changes at all to the pressure it was much better. On my Duster the stock power steering box was actually pretty tight, just the standard over boosted feel. That one I swapped for a Flaming River 16:1 manual box. Night and day difference in steering feel. Yes, it still has that on-center spot that all worm and recirculating ball steering boxes have. That's just how they feel. But it doesn't effect performance. If you're used to driving a new car I can see how it might be annoying though.
Coilovers aren't magic, they're just springs and shocks. Now that the market has expanded so much for quality shocks for the torsion bar set ups it's a lot easier to match the larger torsion bars needed with a properly tuned shock, which beyond the rack and pinion was the other thing that the coilovers swaps had going for them. More options for tuning. But with the Hotchkis Fox adjustable and non-adjustable shocks, or the Viking adjustables, even the Bilstein's out there, the tuning options for the torsion bar set up has improved dramatically. The feel will be a little different, and all suspensions systems have their pro's and con's.