Airride for 68 Camaro yes or no?
 

Dear Friends,
I like my camaro lowered. driving a lowered car is not as comfortable as driving a nearly stock heigth car. that is why I am thinking of buying the shockwave+strongarms for the front. just a push on the button and up it go's.

for the rear I don't want to spend the $2k for the Airbar system.
I am thinking of buying just the shockwave 7000, cutting my monoleaf in half and use the front part of the leaf instead of the 4-link.
Crazy idea? yes of course.:yes:

any suggestions?

It will ride and drive twice as good as stock with that set up if not better.:thumbsup:

just re read the post....I am not really a fan of the leaf cut in half but I know it is done on a regular basis.

you would have to build a pan hard bar for lateral stability.. ive seen ppl just build a swedge tube type control arm to go where the spring used to be and build a torque arm and panahard bar.. then just mount shockwaves.. its still gonna cost you some money..

I would not cut the leafs.... what you are refering to doing is essentially turning your leafs into locating bars. If you have any kind of horsepower this is going to really suck. If you were convinced to go that route you need to look at using a quarter eliptical spring.... Now if it were me.... I would save up the couple of hunderd bucks and go for the AirBar and just replace the leafs all together. By the time it is said and done.... you will realistically probably not be much farther ahead of where you would have been anyway.:D

You would still have to fab a stronger mount for the coilovers. The orginal shock mount is designed for a shock, not carry the weight of the car.

Yes, that is right. I can not put the whole weight of the car on the original shock mount position. I have to make brackets on the frame I guess.

For the front I can go with the Shockwave+strongarms.
But for the rear: how can I level the car up and down without spending the big $$$$$.

you could just bag the front and lower the rear........lots of people do. Or you could run a monoleaf, block it down til it sits low enough and use an airbag to raise it back to ride hieght.

I second Travis' recommendation. We did just that on a 68 for a customer. We used the Airride first gen kit. Bag's and shocks for the front and air over leaf in the rear w/blocks. Complete kit with compressor unit was like $1500ish. Car drove like a dream... :yes:

I third Travis's suggestion.... we just did exactly that on a 69 Mustang. Mono-leaf and 1" block, older style (cool ride) bags with shocks in the rear. The front we put in a set of shockwaves. The whole system is simple, functional and less expensive than a more involved system.

Not to be a smart ass but the Peterbilt Air leaf does just what he's thinking of doing and it works pretty good there in that aplication kind of a "best of both worlds" suspension, it gives you the ride of air and the contol of leafs. Now I dont know how it will work on a car but in theory it should work and maybe hes on to something. In reality it would be cool but the amount of work involved and experimenting to get it dialed in, I would pass and just buy a known system that works.