'71 442 / Ride Heights / Suspension

[davey]

Hi - am new to forum and wanted to say hi! I see a lot of good advise here and wanted to introduce myself and tell my story as I work on my project, '71 Olds 442. First let me say that I have a lot of knowledge on circle track suspensions and the technical aspect of them. My 442 is going to be for street but I want to make improvements without chopping up the car too much.

First thing I wanted to mention is that I have seen a lot of discussion about rear suspension - but almost none talk about the importance of "ride height". In fact, many of the manuf of aftermarket parts do not really talk about it either, or have recommendations for it (other than offering "lowering" options). To have a suspension work optimally, angles of control arms and relative heights of them are critical. This means that either you adjust your ride heights to make best use of control arm placement that you already HAVE, - or - you have to design your mounting points BASED ON the right height you WANT. Manuf pretty much shy away from ride height discussion because every car is different based on many factors; but you cannot escape talking about it if you want your suspension to work right!

Second point is that almost no one talks about the ramifications of different rear suspension setups and the ability to use your current exhaust system (or one off the shelf). For me, I want the exhaust to come out the rear and be in stock position, and (with the exception of Global West), almost none of the trick rear suspensions allow any room for the exhaust pipes to go anywhere near the stock locations over the rear. This may be fine for many, but it can be a big surprise if you haven't previously thought about it and realize later that you have a problem trying to fit an exhaust to go to the rear of the car, and almost always are going to require a custom exhaust job.

Thanks, just wanted to throw this into the discussion.

-Dave