Are stock/repo style upper and lower control arms good enough for some light road racing? I will be rebuilding my suspension in the next couple of months thanks to a settlement for damage to the car during shipping and want it to be a street/road race type of setup.. Not too stiff but good enough for some fun if I ever put it on a road track. Ive got the mid eye 4.5 leafs in the back and will probably go with 620lb 1 inch lowering springs up front, shelby drop, 1 inch sway bar and roller perches. Anything else that wouldnt cost an arm and a leg?

I was thinking subframe connectors, and with the rest of the money.. About $2,000 total.. I would put in some 3.50 gears a trac-lock and start aquiring parts for a T-5 swap.

 

The occasional autocross should be no problem. I'd be tempted to put a couple tack welds on each shaft cap, just as I would any other.

 

Ok.. How about roller control arms? Are they worth it? It seems soo steep to go from a bushing at about $50 to a roller at $400

 

I don't think you would have any problems, my repro control arms seem pretty good quality. You can even go a tad more expensive and get MOOG ones I believe, stock style but I think just a little better quality. Those shouldn't break the bank and might give you more what you want.

Look out for a thread soon regarding my suspension now that I'm all done, I just need to gather the energy to do a write-up and sort through my pictures. So far though my setup is GREAT, I can't imagine a better bang for the buck setup. With your new springs in the rear it would be even better than mine... I'm still working on that.

I should have that thread up by tomorrow or the next day, maybe even tonight but we shall see.

 

I think roller UCA would be overkill unless it's a track only car. MOOG and McQuay Norris make good replacements. I bought one of the repop kits and am unhappy with the LCA as the bushing is sliding in the mount and causing the metal to rub at the lower boxed mount:



I wish I would have spent an extra $20 and gotten the Moog or McQN. I have temporarily notched them to see if it stops the metal to metal but will eventually change them due to poor quality.

I'm most of the way through the changes you listed on my '67 with the same road course/autocross/DD intentions and installed Poly bushings well lubed in my 4.5 mideye leafs - no squeeks, tight suspension, not jarring. The other improvements I made on the front were to make my own adj. strut rods to eliminate the rubber bushings that allow your alignment to change under hard braking/cornering/acceleration.

This is a pretty good article to give an overview of improvement ideas:
http://home.bresnan.net/~dazed/suspension101
Jon

 

Thats what the other thing was.. Adjustable strut rods. I have noticed that my drivers side wheel sits closer to the front of the car than the passenger side. And I am thinking that the strut rods are to blame. ??

 

Probably just out of alignment, sounds like there's more caster on one side. Some alignment techs do it to account for road crown, or it could just be out of alignment....or a fender could be slightly misalinged. Stock type arms are fine, I'm running that with 1" Shelby drop, 1" 620 springs plus 5 leaf mid eye rear, KYB Gas A Justs, 1.125" sway bar up front, .75" in rear, poly bushings in everything. Still running stock perches(new replacements), but the suspension barely articulates enough to benefit from roller perches, with a softer spring it'd make a bigger difference though. Handles great, and I've had guys in newer sports cars(Corvettes, Honda S2000's, a 911 here and there, BMW's etc) find it difficult to keep up with me on looping freeway on/off ramps, without pushing the car. Rides rough over bumps, but handles really well.

If you run a larger and/or stickier tire setup, then you might want to consider boxing the arms, or switching to tubular, but even then stock arms will still handle really well. Stiffer arms just let you maintain the alignment a bit better under heavy cornering and braking, so at worst with stock arms you're just losing a small amount of handling performance.

Something to consider as well, is that suspension balance is very important. You have a heavier engine up front with the 351 block, so you might want to consider like a 7/8" sway bar up front with a 3/4" in rear, maybe even a smaller front sway bar than that, to try to bias more traction towards the front. Normally with a 289/302 engine that would cause it to oversteer, but the heavier engine up front makes the car want to understeer, so you can tune that out of the suspension with sway bars(they're not just for tuning body roll you know).

 

Hmm.. interesting. Thanks for the input. I dont plan on running a rear sway bar, but you have got me thinking about just cutting my original springs to stay softer, since I am running KYB's, but keep the 1 inch sway bar. The car is and most likely, ever will be, my daily driver. I definately need a real alignment. (I aligned it pretty much by feel in the garage at home, probably a no no, but oh well) The car drives great how it is, but I have noticed that Im starting to pull a little on braking, and I think it is due to the strut rods (they are ugly looking).

Ill be changing out the brake lines/ rotors/ pads when I do the front suspension too, Everything is still working ok but I want it new and the rotors look like they are groved pretty good on the passenger side.

Im running 245 45's in the front and 255 45's in the rear (should have went with the 255 50 or 55) I think they are wide enough for the traction, but I like a taller tire in the rear and the 45 ratio is a little short for my taste, but it still looks good and is barely taller than the front..

 

Regarding the strut rods you probably should get adjustable ones if you want a more performance alignment. I had my shop try to align my car to opentrackers street specs which call for 1.5 to 2.5 degrees caster but there was simply not enough threads on the stock strut rods to achieve that. They did 1.1 on one sid eand .6 on the other (if I remember right) to account for the road crown. It drives straight and handles well, but if I really want to align it up to a more performance standard I'm going to have to shell out a couple hundred bucks for new strut rods. If this is what you want as well then you will have to do the same, but I simply couldn't afford it and didn't feel it was necessary for my driving style.

Just because your strut rods are ugly looking does not mean they won't work well when everything is professionally aligned, mine cleaned up perfectly (but I was using my dad's huge compressor and sand blast cabinet ) and the nuts thread on easily now. Just decide what your ant out of your car to see if you want to shell out over 200 bucks for adjustables, otherwise invest $30 in good rubber bushings (NOT poly).


And 67mustand302, can you explain more why you would want a smaller sway bar on a heavier front end? I was under the impression that for sway bars bigger is better... My 1" bar works well so far

 

Cutting the springs will make them stiffer.