DOES THE HDK SUSPENSION K-MEMBER HANDLE BETTER THAN A T-BAR SUSPENSION?
Of course it is because there is no measurable value for human perception. However, as previously mentioned, my passenger who has been in the car for many miles commented that it "felt better". He was simply a passenger with only his *** being the connecting point to the car, no steering feedback in his hands. I wish I could explain it, but I can't. The only thing I can offer is a passenger seat for you to feel on your own.
I get what you're saying, and I understand. But when you say stuff like that, you open the door for directly opposing opinions. Which is also fine, but you have to understand you haven't "proven" anything by saying that, so we just end up going back and forth. I've had a life long "mopar guy" ride shotgun in my Duster and say it was the best handling Mopar he'd ever ridden in. I was super stoked to hear it and it meant a lot
to me, but I'm not gonna say I have the "best handling mopar" because I know that's not true either.
I originally had springs of similar wheel rate to my 1.08 bars. Are the QA1 shocks better than the Fox Hotckis? Sure the double adjustable makes it more versitile, but is there damping actually better? Likely another subjective comment unless someone has compared the two on a shock dyno.
It was a general comment. Your 1.08" bars have an almost identical wheel rate as your 400# bars, assuming the motion ratio you supplied is decent (which I'm sure it is). I don't have a direct comparison on the shocks, the double adjustability I think would go a long way to improving feel because you can tailor it to what you like personally. That doesn't necessarily mean they'd make the car
faster, but it adds to the "feels better" aspect of it.
Likely my mistake. I've seen photos of fractured shock towers. Perhaps it was another brand.
Gerst. There are multiple pictures of fractured uprights on the original Gerst K frames, before the design was bought out and improved by QA1. I'm not personally aware of any AlterK failures, although that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any.
I'll see what I can do about the toe change and camber change through suspension travel. That will take some time to measure. I also need to educate myself on the proper way to measure toe change with simple tools. I think the best way to see the roll center change would be to use the online tool.
Oh believe me I know it takes some time and set up, it's why I haven't done it yet. There are a few different articles and books on how to do it with pretty simple tools, one of the "green brick" articles detailed how to do a lot of it with pretty simple stuff. I'll take a look at that article and see if it's as relevant as I recall.
I dont know enough to say anything that you guys are getting in deep here. I am not comparing it to any buddies else’s or to factory. I just think it’s well-made and it’s not wimpy. Plus it serves a big purpose when you’re doing customization work. Plus I am sure if all of you come up with some improvement on his design, I am sure he’d be more than willing to upgrade and to make it better, that he has already been doing over the years. Denny can correct me here but I believe this all started to put Gen 2 Hemi’s in A bodies.
Absolutely getting into the weeds on some of this. But really that's the only place you can make some of these comparisons
objectively.
Because realistically, we're almost always going to be comparing different cars with different drivers, even when we can use the same track. Tim's comparison is one of the few that actually compares a pretty well tuned torsion bar suspension against a pretty well tuned coil over conversion, but even then we're still comparing a lot of subjective elements. Even just Tim progressing as a driver (which is awesome) will mean that his times will get faster as he goes along, so just saying he ran a certain track faster now than before isn't 100% on the suspension change.
@J-c-c
Maybe you should have just asked the simple question in this context like "how is this "whatever" relevant?" before you start you start making declarations.
You are the self-appointed decider what this thread is about now?
You obviously missed the point, again, Stay on the side limes, please. The inward pull in my test is primarily resisted by the K member that the shock/coil over towers connect to. It was mentioned that the towers have seen failures, and that is still news to me
This is uncalled for. This is Tim's thread, and while I would like to see additional geometry measurements comments like these just serve to derail the thread from any objective findings. Tim knows more than enough to not "stay on the side lines", he's already done more to measure and post geometry comparisons for the HDK or any coil over conversion that I've seen.
