Opinions: Fast-ratio manual steering, suspension upgrades

I wouldn't go 16:1 LA either. What size front tires you running.

I did run 1" t-bars in LA and it was ok as a daily driver.

The 1.14 I run now are annoying when I go back down there to visit. I wouldn't do that size in a daily driver there.

Whats the name of the shop is aligning your car?

Yeah, but those Mopar Performance 1.14's are rated at 350 lbs/in for the wheel rate. Even my 1.12's from Firm Feel are "only" rated at 300 lbs/in. That's a 17% increase even compared to my bars, and mine are still 250% stiffer than the stock .87" bars at 120 lbs/in. Although the stock bars are way undersprung.

According to PST their 1.03's are 265 lbs/in, but that number doesn't even jive with the published rates on their other torsion bars. Using the same spring constant as their other bars (from solving backward from their own published rates) I get 232 lbs/in, which makes a lot more sense. At any rate, there's a lot of folks on here running them that are pretty happy with them.


It makes sense to look at how the cars were engineered when they were new as compared to what we want from the car today.
In 1964, the buying public seemed to want a really smooth ride. Handling was not much of an issue until the tire technology improved.
The suspensions and steering were designed around the limits of the tires on the market. Soft torsion bars, weak shocks, easy effort steering is common on many cars built back then. If you take one of these cars and simply add a set of modern radial tires, you will start to see other areas that can benefit from improvements. The alignment settings need to be changed with wider radial tires to get the most from the superior tire design. Anti-sway bars will keep the car from leaning too far in the turns. Frame connectors help reduce chassis flex from the stiff torsion bars/sway bars. Urethane sway bar bushings, a welded K member, gussets on the lower control arms, Monte Carlo brace (This is a triangle gusset that connects each shock tower to the firewall)....Many of these things are total overkill for a nice street driver.
In short, a few small upgrades including tires and a modern alignment often will improve the feel of a classic car without draining the wallet.

Yup, it's a slippery slope. All starts with the tires. The better the tires are, the more force they transmit to the suspension and chassis, and the stiffer the suspension and chassis needs to be to manage the additional loads. You can definitely upgrade some without setting off a cascade of upgrades that go throughout the entire chassis though. And just adding some better tires and a good alignment will do wonders compared to stock. Add moderately sized torsion bars and sway bars and you can do pretty well. Although I would recommend subframe connectors for everything regardless, they make a big difference.

But it's pretty easy to go down the rabbit hole. And you have to match to your tires, so, if you go big and sticky on the tires you end up doing pretty much everything you listed and then some.