Suspension upgrades ,the best route

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n8ling

n8ling

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Looking for some opinions and advise. Would love to get rid of some torsion bars and leaf springs, coil overs all four corners!! Rack and pinion steering the works! The platform is a 69 Cuda 360 60over motor plate manual steer 8 3/4 built 904 car . Would like to lose 3" or so in the rear . Budget is in the middle , any particular front end, rear end better then the other? Looking for nice road car package ??
 
Well if you want a one stop shop, I'd go with the RMS setup front and rear. That's if you are set on running C/Os. There's nothing inherently wrong with the stock style suspension though, a cheaper alternitive would be to get the Hotchkis TVS, some nice torsion bars from PST or FirmFeel, and upgrade all the bushing to a polygraphite style.
 
No need to loose the leaf springs and torsion bars.

The Hotchkiss equipped cars handle extremely well and their still using bars and leafs.

Take a look at the threads in the Suspension, Steering, chassis forum. Lots of good stuff there.
 
You can get 1.03 bars from PST for $120 shipped with your FABO discount.
To run coilovers you will need to reinforce frame and shock area's and body stiffen if you have not done it already.
 
MileHighDart said:
No need to loose the leaf springs and torsion bars.

The Hotchkiss equipped cars handle extremely well and their still using bars and leafs.

Take a look at the threads in the Suspension, Steering, chassis forum. Lots of good stuff there.
Click to expand...

Exactly so. The Hotchkis TVR kit will handle just as well with a few tweaks as a coil over equipped car. Coil overs are not inherently better, they're just a different type of spring. They still have more tuning options, but the options for torsion bar suspension are growing every day, and have gotten to the point where most folks can get what they need to have a really well handling car.

You can even bypass the TVR kit, which has some things you don't need and lacks some things you do, and go this route...

This is what I would do (and have basically done on my Duster)

1.06 (or bigger) Firm Feel torsion bars - $355
Tubular UCA’s (PST, FFI, etc) $350
Adjustable strut rods (PST SR 14385) $279
Solid tie rod sleeves (PST SAS 440S) $49
LCA boxing plate (PST LCAPLTMOP621) $14.50
Greasable LCA pins (FFI w bushings) $135

Hellwig Sway bars

Tubular front 1 1/8” #55904 $175
Solid rear 3/4” #6907 $237

Afco leaf springs

20231M (121 lb) $320
or
20231 (142 lb) $340

1” bushings for shackles
Energy suspension 2-2117G $9

Bilstein RCD shocks
(RCD-70-56663) $400

Which puts you at $2,344. Yes, that's more than the TVR kit at $2,100, but you get torsion bars and shocks, which you don't get with the TVR.

It's also $2k less than a Alterkation set up for the front. And $4k less than a Alterkation front and Street Lynx rear set up, since I already included the rear suspension. You can use that money for some nice 13" front and 11.7" rear rotor kits from Dr. Diff for some serious stopping power, and still have enough to get some nice 17 or 18" rims and tires to actually put it all to the road. You can even take out the Bilsteins and replace them with Hotchkis or Viking adjustable for some extra adjustability for a few hundred bucks more. And I bet you would STILL be ahead of where you would be financially with just the AlterK and street lynx. So you could pick up a Flaming River manual 16:1 steering box, or a Borgeson power steering box from Bergman Auto Craft. And still might even be able to get the frame connectors you'd need to really enjoy the car.

And at that point, you would have a really well handling old mopar, instead of just a couple of bolt on kits with thousands more to spend on brakes, rims, and tires.
 
Two of the best, most well-known Mopars for handling are a pair of Valiants that still sport leaf springs and torsion bars (The "Green Brick" and Tim Werner's old car).
 
Don't mean to hijack the thread but why do people even want coilovers up front? Yes it's easier to build headers then but any other advantages?

From what I understand getting these cars to handle can be very cheap, personally don't like new front ends, way too expensive and kanda kill the car by losing the t bars..
 
advantages are easier to dial in / tune for autocross
hemidenny kit with coilovers has no bump steer

biggest #1 most important thing is the rubber underneath, helps turning, helps with stability, helps braking, helps accelerating...
sway bars would be #2
springs/shocks would be secondary to the rubber and sway bars
rack and pinion is superior to the original steering, but you only get that with one of the suspension tubular kframe upgrades like hemidenny's
 
Waht are you wanting to do with this car up there in BC? Road race? Fast cruise? Will you be running the road up to and down from Tofino? (That is a different setup! Think 'rally car' with lots of suspension travel!) Reveal something about what you want to do with the car.

BTW...the 'no bump steer' aspect is not inherent with the coilovers; it is a function of the control arm lengths and angles. (And the right bumpsteer is desirable; study the control arm angles on an F1 or Indy car....they are a certain way for a reason.)

Easier tuning with coilovers: yes. But having rallied on coilover struts, once the spring rate is dialed in, usually you only change the ride height. (Well, you might change spring rates when going to snow rallies or ice racing for example... not what many Mopar guys ever do!)

IMO, the Mopar T-bar front is a pretty good stock spring system. Least amount of unsprung weight. Mod the control arm lengths and angles and mount points if you want to optimize, but that is a step beyond what most want to do. IMO, I would ditch the rear leafs and re-arrange the rear suspension with track bar and 3 or 4 link before I would mess with the front too much.

But on a budget, neither makes much sense, IMO. Tires, shocks, anti-sway bars, and springs first will get most guys/gals to where they are pretty happy.
 
moparlover said:
advantages are easier to dial in / tune for autocross
hemidenny kit with coilovers has no bump steer
Click to expand...

The "easier to dial in" part gets to be less of an issue everyday. There are at least 2 different, high quality, adjustable shocks available now that are geared strictly to handling. And several non-adjustable shocks that are probably more than adequate for 99% of the street drivers. And the number of larger torsion bar suppliers has doubled in the last 5 or 6 years, there's actually quite a range now available from 1" all the way up to 1.18", with several supplier's offering 1" to 1.06" bars that are great for A-bodies.

As far as "no bump steer", I have news. The original system has very little bump steer. There's no reason to swap out your stock suspension to get rid of bump steer that isn't there. If you had a mustang, different story.

You can check out this article that deals with swapping A-body spindles for the later FMJ spindles. There's a nice table showing the toe-change exhibited by A-bodies, as well as a comparison to what racer's typically look for (less than .031 degrees of change per inch of travel). The table shows that stock cars have MUCH less than that in the positive direction, (.009 per inch!!!) and only that much (.0315 per inch) in the negative direction. Assuming, of course, that you still have 2.25" of travel in each direction, which, if you have 1.12" torsion bars and are lowered like I am, you don't. I might have half that amount of travel. Maybe. So, yeah, I'm not even mildly interested in the amount of bump steer my car has, its less than significant.

http://www.moparmusclemagazine.com/techarticles/suspension/mopp_0503_swapping_a_and_b_disc_brake_spindles/viewall.html
 
A torsion bar is a coil spring that has been "un-coiled". They sit low keeping the center of gravity low. The ride height is readily adjustable with regular hand tools. Yes, coil springs are cheaper, so if you choose poorly multiple times, there may be some savings. An aftermarket system like the Alterkation will provide more room for custom headers. Excellent headers for any reasonable engine choice exist that will clear the original suspension/steering at a fair if not low price.

The rear leaf springs are light, provide lateral axle location, a bit of passive "rear steer" and good traction. Any "road" type tire will clear fine.

Rack and pinion steering? Why?

Motor plate ?!? There are cheaper ways to make your water pump leak, transmit excessive vibration to the chassis, and weigh more than the factory mounts. Or, maybe not. But why?!?

Chassis stiffening? BUY THIS FIRST!!! http://store.uscartool.com/a-body-chassis-stiffening-kit.html

Heim joints suck on the street. They really do. (they extra suck on Jeeps, ask me how I know!!!)

What do you plan to actually do with the car? The basic A-body platform is really quite capable. But if, through "bright shiny object theory" you feel you need to buy some stuff that will give a Honda guy an instant orgasm, just buy...
 
72bluNblu said:
...
As far as "no bump steer", I have news. The original system has very little bump steer. There's no reason to swap out your stock suspension to get rid of bump steer that isn't there. If you had a mustang, different story.
...
Click to expand...

I agree.

I have a Longacre Bump Steer Gauge used by race teams. It measures to the 0.000" !

My car measured with very little bumpsteer. With all stock geometry.

Almost no car will have 0.000" bumpsteer. There will almost always be some small amount that may be insignificant, but still zero.

Just changing your caster setting will change you bumpsteer. So no system out of the box can guarantee ZERO bumpsteer or the same 100% bumpsteer amount for every car. But it can be an insignificant amount that is optimum bumpsteer or near optimum. With the right equipment you can often times reduce it even further.
 
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