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Old 06-25-2006, 07:19 PM
Blown353 Blown353 is offline
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Neither, and this recommendation is coming from a person with GW suspension on their car (me.) I am not knocking GW's parts at all because of quality (the quality is definately there) but because of the design.

Both Hotchkis and GW's suspension are based around the "B"-body spindle swap which has a lot of drawbacks-- excessive bump steer, slower steering ratio, incorrect ackerman, and too low of a roll center. The only thing the B-body swap does right is put a taller spindle in there for more negative camber gain and also the upper arms put more positive caster in for better straight line stability. Other than that the swap is all negatives as mentioned above.

There are better options out there now that will give you superior handling such as Howe tall ball joints paired with stock spindles or you could go with AFX spindles.

One thing you can run though is GW's lower control arms, as they replace the stock lowers which have a tendency to crack by the lower ball joint over time.

As far as the rear suspension, the factory design has some serious issues and there is nothing that will get the design problems out of the picture. You can however make it smooth and predictable by eliminating all sources of bind by using spherical jointed lower arms and upper arms. I like Edelbrock or Currie upper arms with rubber bushings or Wolfe Racecraft spherical bearings on the rear end, and for the lowers I like Currie, Global West TBC-4 arms, or you can make your own from tubing and spherical joints on each end. In the end the rear end will still have way too high of a roll center but it will drive and handle smoothly and predictably. Taking it to the next level will require a complete redesign and custom fab.
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1969 Chevelle
Old setup: Procharged/intercooled/EFI 353 SBC, TKO, ATS/SPC/Global West suspension, C6 brakes & hydroboost.
In progress: LS2, 3.0 Whipple, T56 Magnum, torque arm & watts link, Wilwood Aero6/4 brakes, Mk60 ABS, Vaporworx, floater 9" rear, etc.

Last edited by Blown353; 06-26-2006 at 05:58 PM.
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