Magnum Force 2" Drop Spindle

Drop spindles on the torsion bar suspension are a waste of time and money.

Think about this- the drop spindle lowers the car 2” without changing the angles of the control arms. So, if you lower the car 2” from factory, the control arm angles remain stock. That should be a good thing, but it’s not in this case.

The best suspension geometry for these cars occurs when the control arms are about parallel to the ground. Best camber curves, best bump steer numbers, best suspension geometry for radial tires. So, if you use drop spindles, you don’t get the best geometry. The CG is lowered, but that’s it. Your camber gain/curve is as factory designed for bias plies. And, if you don’t lower your car the full 2” for ride height your geometry is actually WORSE than stock. Bump steer is worse, camber gain is worse, roll center is worse.

But ok, the geometry changes aren’t gigantic, and driving moderately on the street maybe not everyone would notice. So then it’s about ride quality, you lower the car 2” without losing suspension travel with the drop spindles, unlike if you lower the car with the adjusters, so you can keep your floppy stock torsion bar right? Well, no, not necessarily. Because LCA to frame travel isn’t the only problem. If you lower the car 2”, another issue comes up. Tire to inner fender well clearance. My car is lowered just over 2” from stock. My suspension at full compression puts the spindle 13” from the bottom of the flat of the inner fender. That means with a 26” tall tire, at full compression, well, the tire would hit the inner fender. Keep those floppy torsion bars and you’ll bottom the tire on the inner fender at the same time you hit the bump stops. That’s worse than stiff torsion bars.

The other is wheel clearance. The drop spindle changes the relationship between the center of the rim and the outer ball joint. So, tie rod end clearance changes. Maybe not a huge deal if you’re running 15” rims and not a lot of backspace, but, if you’re running 17 or 18” wheels you lose some of that additional backspace clearance you gain by going to those diameters. Basically you’re stuck with skinnier tires again, not unlike using factory wheels.

Bottom line is, a 2” drop from factory is fairly close to the limit for clearance regardless of how you do it. Unless you like running short tires, which will also put your exhaust and K frame really low to the ground. If you use larger torsion bars and good shocks the cost will be about the same as the drop spindles, and your car willl handle great. If you use drop spindles, your car will handle like factory, and you’ll have spent just as much money.

And the ball joint angle thing is crap. I’ve never had an issue with them binding, and I’m pretty close to having tire to inner fender clearance issues.

The magnumforce spindles are fine too. They’re probably stronger than the originals. That might not go for all of their parts, but the spindles are plenty strong. The couple of failures I’ve heard about with their parts were K frames, and that was the old design and probably at least 6+ years ago. There’s no way in hell I would run fabricated spindles like the FatMan spindles on the street. JMO.