Suspension Question

[dirtybird]

On A 70-72 Chevelle What Are The Most Important Parts To Upgrade For Better Handling.

[speedjohnston]

Tires will make the biggest difference then your basic spring, shock and sway bar upgrades. A good alignment when your all done. It all depends how far you want to go with it.

[coolwelder62]

Speedjohnston is right. Too quote Harry Hogg.( Cole,tires is what wins the race).But all the other parts will help too!.

[dirtybird]

I Guess I Should Ask, If Budget Is A Issue What Would Be The Parts To Invest In First. I Would Like To Have A Good Ride Quality And Also Be Able To Get Into Corners.

[speedjohnston]

Whats the budget? That may determine a lot of things. Its hard to give more of an answer then what was given without knowing a lot more about the car and what you intend to spend on it. (then double that number because thats what usually happens)

[dirtybird]

The Budget Is Not The Main Factor. I Don't Know What Makes One Product Better Than Others. My Only Way TO Decide Is Name And Price.

[SLO_Z28]

Not to be too big of a Hotchkis fanboi but their kit is pretty badass for the price. Its setup so that everything just works together. Depending on your budget there are other options, but this is a proven kit:
http://www.hotchkis.net/tvs_system_1...all_block.html

You can get it cheaper than that too, im sure someone on here re-sells those kits for a little less.

[dirtybird]

I Had Hotchkis On My 64 Chevelle. Sold The Car Before I Got To Drive It.

[Apogee]

Since you're looking for options, I would suggest contacting Mark at SC&C and borrowing some of his suspension expertise. He does pro-touring suspension consults and has probably forgotten more about the subject matter than I will ever know.

Also, I'll shamelessly pimp his book "How to Make Your Muscle Car Handle", which is due to come out later this summer/fall. You can pre-buy it on Amazon.com here if you're interested. If it's half as informative as the man himself is, then it'll be the best $16.47 I've ever spent.

Tobin
KORE3

[davey]

You can make a tremendous improvement with some simple things and not spend a lot of money - if you want a race car, that's another story.

Bigger front sway bar and add a rear sway bar if you do not have one already. Replace shocks with good stock style replacements (bilstein makes good ones for this purpose).

Make sure all your front end bushings, tie rod ends, etc., are up to stuff, replace as necessary - even with stock parts.

These simple changes alone will dramatically improve handling and maybe so much so you will be happy to stop there. Rear shock change alone will dramatically improve bite and reduce wheel hop and chatter.

If you want to go further than this, you have to keep in mind that single changes to components are not necessarily going to improve things. For example, you can have the whole front suspension redesigned but if you have sloppy steering you aren't going to feel a confident handling in your hands or butt - even though the geometry is drastically improved. You will get to a point where chassis flex is going to come into play, and until you get rid of the flex, nothing you change in other components will make a difference. You get the picture.

By the way, the basic "stock" GM A-Body rear suspension works pretty darn good with only a little tweaking.

One last thing to keep in mind - often times the WEAKEST link in handling is the TIRES. You wouldn't believe how much tire flex negates all the trick things you do to the suspension geometry. The problem is that once you put good tires with short sidewalls and elminate a lot of that flex, all the other little problems start feeling like bigger problems and things have to be "right" to get the car to handle. At this point you have to keep in mind that you cannot get a car to handle perfectly for every corner and situation - everything is a compromise and the more things you do to "improve" handling, the more obvious those comprises become.

Since you are talking about a GM A-BODY car, keep in mind that before you even start, you have a poor weight ratio (rear percentage), a high center of gravity, you have little to no aerodynamics (compared to today's cars or real race cars), and if you are going to drive on the street, you NEED wheel movement (shock travel).

I haven't even talked about BRAKES, and braking in corners has a tremendous effect on what happens with the handling when you hit the brakes. You need good rear brakes and have them proportioned properly to ensure you aren't making your front tires do all the braking and take away their ability to corner. A tire can only do so much and when a big part of that traction is being used up by braking, only so much is left for cornering. Anti-dive and anti-squat comes into play here too. GM engineers designed the stock suspension to make the driver feel like something is going to go real wrong if you dive into a corner too hard while braking. It was done on purpose. Lowering the car 1 or 2" helps this out a lot - not because you are lowering the center of gravity (although that always helps), but because you are changing the suspension angles to reduce the tendency to load up the front of the car under heavy breaking. It's all about the vectors of force. Weight transfer HAS to happen - but how the transfer is controlled is key.

Anyway, my response is already too long - sorry about that. Hope my rant was helpful.

-Dave