Quote: Is there any good before and after tests on these aftermarket suspensions?
By good I mean a couple of things. Third party, same rims and tires and if possible same brakes?
Not interested in manufacturer's claims, seen too many shenanigan's over the years. Like running 305 heads on a 350 and claiming 40+hp gain over "stock" heads.
Almost not interested in magazine claims, seen too many shill for the sponsor shenanigans too, unless it was a three way head to head, like stock vs XV vs RMS vs Hotchkis type article, if it exists.
I have seen articles were an aftermarket suspension was put on a Mopar and showed improvement, but they serious upgraded the tires and rims too, so who knows what did what and that, in my book, is not a real test of the suspension swap.
It would cost a small fortune to do a valid A-B-C-D-E type of test with all of the aftermarket systems. Maybe $100K worth of parts and test costs by the time you rent a track and hire a driver and all of that. So no, I'm pretty confident that nobody will ever do that test.
I will say that Tim and I spent a lot of time looking at every available aftermarket setup. We're both engineers and he is a very highly trained driver. We had a budget, but we could've bought any system on the market and stayed in our budget.
Our analysis was that for a street driven track car, a stock based system is still the best choice. The XV stuff is probably the most advanced system on the market, but it is a huge change from the stock stuff and requires a big learning curve to fully optimize it.
Now I suppose we might have changed our minds if there had a been a Mopar guy with a fast car who was running the XV system. But when we looked around at real cars who spend real time on real tracks, the vast majority of those cars are running stock based suspensions.
The "pro touring" type of cars don't seem to show up at the track much. Or at least we didn't see much of them.
Tim's Valiant would go to the track and compete very well against Vipers, Vettes, Porsche, etc. He was usually the only classic Mopar at the track. Would the car have been even faster with a full XV suspension setup? Don't know, maybe. Then again, we might have been stuck in the garage trying to figure out how to make it work instead of getting on the track and having fun.
