72 Duster build - Pro touring slant six

Beautiful car!

Not sure how I missed this build thread, you've done some great work!

As for the ride height discussion, I don't think 24.5" is realistically achievable with the factory suspension geometry. . I run my Duster at around the 24 7/8" mark to the fender opening in the front. I also run QA1 LCA's, the early style that didn't have the bump stops built in. That adds almost a full inch of suspension travel the factory arms don't have. I run a little 3/8" bump stop for the lower, and a taller 2.5" bumpstop on top (to re-center the travel around the new ride height). Even with that set up and 1.12" bars with Hotchkis fox shocks I will occasionally bottom the suspension out on the street. It's infrequent, so it's not like the car needs to be raised but I know that it's as low as it should be with the 1.12" bars because I'm using all of the available travel.

View attachment 1715832035

The other issue that comes up is just running out of room other places. On my car I have 13" from the center of the spindle to the lowest part of the inner fender well at full suspension compression. Now, that's a smaller number because of the QA1 LCA's, but, it means that a 26" tall front tire would be touching the lowest part of the inner fender at full compression. 72BBSwinger had to address this on his car. With mine I'm leaving the inner fender wells alone, I just won't run anything taller than 26" for tires up front and I'm already running the smallest bump stop I should be anyway.
View attachment 1715832038

Have you upgraded the torsion bars yet? Honestly, at your current height you may already be sitting on the factory lower bump stops if you haven't swapped them out already.

Thanks! It has been a fun build.

Yeah I think I'm about as low as I can go on the front. I've hit some pretty good sized bumps and have not had any issues so I'm going to leave it be. Definitely don't want to modify the inner fender just to lower it another inch. But it would look good a tad lower in the front.

Torsion bars are currently a set .94's from firm feel. I had a set of 1.08" from Bergman Auto Craft but just couldn't get it to sit right. No matter if the arms were all the way up, down, or at ride height during the install it ended up with the car about 2" higher than now. So I went with the .94's to get rid of the slant bars and they have been feeling pretty good. I did add the shorter bump stops and has decent clearance at this height.