'71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs!

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/23/12 07:24 PM

Frankenduster: This has nothing to do with pretty shocks. The were specifically built for my car and custom valved by one of the head engineers at Bilstein, and they were a birthday gift. If I wanted $400 bolt in OEM-type shocks I could have bought them. This has to do with the performance aspect as this is going to be a ROAD RACE car, not a restoration. If that's the only advice you have I'd suggest you troll the restoration forum as this isn't supposed to be a place of standard Mopar close-mindedness.

Steve: Due to being at a new school and job the car hasn't been touched in a while. I've tried to find places with proper backspacing wheels that are the same design as current, but have been very unsuccessful in my endeavors. The tie-rod setup is being removed and it's all going back to stock. It just boils down to wasting more money on a temporary solution, which I'd like to avoid if possible. The flipped tie rods go back to something Ron told me could be done. I knew little-to-nothing about suspension at the time and didn't understand the aspects of geometry of changing those types of things, which is why it wound up that way.

runinonmt: those are adjusters on the shocks not screws.

Thanks to the others for the solid input. I measured the shocks and they are a hair over 1/2" wide, so I'm gonna have to come up with a different solution for the shocks. I talked to Eric and he said he measured these out longer than stock, so I definitely cannot put on something that is going to shorten it 1". Because I'll destroy the shocks if they bottom out before the car is on the bump stops.

Posted By: cageman

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/23/12 09:42 PM

Sounds like you know it all, I am in wonder as to why you are on here asking a question, when your knowledge put you in this situation of bad ideas being implemeted.
And your bilstein buddy didnt engineer anything for you, just grabbed some off the shelf shocks and said they were made for you. Nice try. Real smart engineer buddy, put some longer shocks on a lowered car

Posted By: 72Swinger

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 02:01 AM

Get some 18's and have a permanent fix dude....

Attached picture 7132707-093.JPG

Posted By: feets

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 03:26 AM

Quote:

Get some 18's and have a permanent fix dude....

I think that's the best answer yet.

Don't try to pinch a penny after all the work you've done. Get the proper wheels for the car. Let a Mustang guy run the Mustang wheels.

Posted By: AndyF

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 04:05 AM

If you have real Mustang Bullit rims then they should be 17x8 with 5.72 backspacing. Those will fit just fine with a thin spacer. But, it isn't a simple bolt on. The hubs need to be turned down a little bit and you should use longer wheel studs to make it right.

The Mustang wheels are a great value, but the whole job has to be done correctly to get the odd parts to fit and work together. I have no idea how you got the tie rods on upside down? That doesn't make any sense to me. I guess I'd have to see the setup to understand what is going on there.

Posted By: autoxcuda

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 05:12 AM

Quote:

Sounds like you know it all, I am in wonder as to why you are on here asking a question, when your knowledge put you in this situation of bad ideas being implemeted.
And your bilstein buddy didnt engineer anything for you, just grabbed some off the shelf shocks and said they were made for you. Nice try. Real smart engineer buddy, put some longer shocks on a lowered car

Why all the negativity and harshness??

And maybe/probably the shocks are going to work. Oh well. He got them for free. No need to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Geez

Posted By: Kern Dog

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 05:34 AM

Quote:

Why all the negativity and harshness??

WHY? because the OP gets on here and pisses on the members that didn't "rubber stamp" what he was thinking.
IF these shocks were "specially built" for you, then they would fit the car. They obviously will NOT FIT nor will they work, since you stated that they would run out of travel before the LCA bumpstop contacts the frame. Jump down from the soapbox and get the RIGHT parts. These parts were free and they appear to be worth it.
I wouldn't take a gifted small block Chevy intake and spend hours trying to get it to work on my 440, no matter how much I liked the person that gave it to me.

Posted By: MuuMuu101

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 05:48 AM

I don't know if this matters but I know off the Hotchkis site they sell Blisten shocks for cars and stock height and another one separately for cars that have or plan to be lowered. Maybe he was just given the wrong one?

Posted By: 68HemiB

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 05:45 PM

I am really regretting my choice to weigh in on this thread in the first place.
Jon's a good kid, and seeming to bash him on a public forum is the last place I would want to be.

Quote:

Driving the car gave me horrendous bump steer -with how low it is- because the crappy KYBs were on the bottom end of their travel and rendered themselves useless.

When I first read the above portion of Jon's original post, it seemed to me that he thought the bump steer issue came solely from the lowering of the car, and not tie rod geometry. Upon further review, it was probably just a sentence structure issue. If he didn't know before, he surely understands now where the tie rod end needs to be.

Here's the tie rod background. The heim joint in place of outer TRE first came about in hopes that a smaller mass piece would resolve the wheel clearance issue. When that was not enough, the heim was flipped up on top. Although doing this resolved that particular interference issue, it rendered the car virtually undrivable. It was at this point I was brought in to align the car. Once I got over to Ron's, it was revealed to me what had been done, and I explained why a simple alignment would not resolve his issues.

Jon posed two specific questions - getting his wheels to fit and his shocks to fit.

AndyF and others have had some suggestions for getting the wheels to fit.

On to the shocks... Just as the steering geometry was news to me on alignment day, the shock stuff was unknown to me prior to opening this thread the first time. Resolving the front shock mounting issue without making the length issue worse will be a challenge. Fabricated adapters would have to marry the ends of the shocks to the LCA and inner fender at points in space far enough apart to match the length limitations of the shocks. A top adapter that fits under the existing inner fender will place the lower end even lower - probably too low for even a special saddle to address without dragging on the ground. This leaves the necessity of piercing the inner fender and placing that adapter up into the engine compartment. This is a very adventurous project to get shocks to fit.

Posted By: 72Swinger

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 07:20 PM

Could a guy mount the lower shock eye INSIDE the lower control arm?

Posted By: cageman

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/24/12 07:24 PM

I have the same wheels on my 69 valiant, I HAD to use 1 1/2 spacers on the front, 1 to clear the hub as the wheels will not go over the front hub, and 2 to move them out as the offset is different. No clearence issues with the tie rod at all.
If you dont know what tie rod location has to do with bumpsteer, you shouldnt be modifying a car. You should be reading a book or asking questions. Not coming on a message board wondering why your car does this and telling us it is a shock issue and how the new shocks which will never fit are engineeered for your car. Then getting upset with a guy that has the right answer to your question, I guess I have no time for that.

Posted By: gmachinedart1

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 03/25/12 04:36 AM

On to the shocks... Just as the steering geometry was news to me on alignment day, the shock stuff was unknown to me prior to opening this thread the first time. Resolving the front shock mounting issue without making the length issue worse will be a challenge. Fabricated adapters would have to marry the ends of the shocks to the LCA and inner fender at points in space far enough apart to match the length limitations of the shocks. A top adapter that fits under the existing inner fender will place the lower end even lower - probably too low for even a special saddle to address without dragging on the ground. This leaves the necessity of piercing the inner fender and placing that adapter up into the engine compartment. This is a very adventurous project to get shocks to fit.

I agree with this.If he is going to use the longer shock,he will have to do something like this.I almost did this but ended up speccing out some bilstiens that fit a camaro or chevelle and just removing the tbar and lower bushing and use a universal poly bushing from energy suspension.The chevelle shock is 8.6" compressed and the camaro is a bit longer at 9 or 9.5 I think.He has to ck the suspension travel to see what he can fit in there.I have to use the shorter chevelle shock but Peter Bergman uses the rcd bilstiens for the lower ride height with no problems.

Posted By: CokeBottleKid

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/07/12 12:04 PM

Quote:

Sounds like you know it all, I am in wonder as to why you are on here asking a question, when your knowledge put you in this situation of bad ideas being implemeted.
And your bilstein buddy didnt engineer anything for you, just grabbed some off the shelf shocks and said they were made for you. Nice try. Real smart engineer buddy, put some longer shocks on a lowered car

Ok ladies and recliner seat engineers. I am the 'smart' engineer that set up these shocks for him. Lets start with the goal:

As a Bilstein employee I had a certain number of discounted shock purchases, I made the choice to use my last buy (before I quit that crap job) to hook Jon up with a set of pimping aftermarket race shocks since I knew he wanted to make his car into a nice road-race/auto-x vehicle. Yes I could have gotten him a regular set of Joe Schmoe crimp shocks (like the ones you all buy from Hotchkis) but I felt a better use of my buy would be to set him up with a set of threaded body motor-sport shocks with adjustable shafts.

Key words here are mono-tube and adjustable shafts, lets say that one more time so it sticks... mono-tube and adjustable shafts. Ok now that we're clear with that I'll fill you in on a little bit of basic shock knowledge since you clearly lack any.

Mono-tubes are a great design, less cavitation, better heat transfer characteristics etc. But they have some downsides too, one of them being added deadlength due to the dividing piston (the little cuppy thing that seperates the gasy chamber from the oily stuff). And the gasy chamber (the place with the hissy stuff). This makes it difficult to hit short compressed lengths with a given travel. On that note, guess what car has a short compressed length for the given amount of travel... yep A-body mopars! Have a cookie.

The other con that applies to this application is if you want adjustable damping you more or less NEED to have an adjustable shaft (unless it's a reservoir shock which this isn't). Twin tubes do not have this issue as you can place an adjustable base valve between the chambers and locate it various places on the shock.

So we have a shock that is already on the limits of what monotubes are capable of... well lets throw this next little variable into the party and see how fun it gets.

There are only so many lengths of adjustable shafts available. They don't just make adjustable shafts at lengths of every 10mm, they are made for specific applications. On top of that there are very few pin mount shafts available, the only ones that Bilstein had at the time were incredibly expensive PSS style shafts which are like $800 a piece so obviously this was not an option. The only option were rod-end style shafts.

So now we have a shock that is on the limits of mono-tube capabilities AND we have to use an eye-ring style rod end that ADDs deadlength... Hey guess what? We can't hit those numbers we were aiming for. Not only that but there are only certain lengths of shock tubes available and only certain lengths of adjustable shafts.

The logical choice is, screw the compressed length, hit the required travel length and ensure the extended is in the right range.

The idea is simple, it can be seen on most older ford products:

You make a hole for the shaft through the inner fenders and extend it's location. Obviously there are different ways to accomplish this, you can do something similar to what ford did, and make a little mount that bolts to the stock inner fender and extends the upper mount a little higher to gain some compressed length. Or the better stiffer stronger way is to weld in some chassis tubing, cut out the inner fenders and mount the shocks to them.

Lets be clear on this, the shocks have the same if not more travel length than the vehicle needs, the compressed and extended are simply longer. Oh and the rears will bolt in with little more than heim spacers.

Posted By: cudazappa

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/07/12 01:52 PM

Lets go back to the basics:

The OP originally posted he had "bump steer" because
"with how low it is- because the crappy KYBs were on the bottom end of their travel and rendered themselves useless."

It was then revealed the true cause of the bump steer:
"Jon, if you have not yet flipped the outer tie rod ends back to where they belong (under the ball joint knuckle), no amount of shock fussing will alleviate your bump steer."

Because the definition of bump steer is "toe change during suspension travel"

So essentially we have two problems. Jon knows the first one (tie rods ends flipped). That's what's causing the bump steer. The second (after we clarified bump-steer) is the suspension running out of travel.

Jon has acknowledged his mistake with tie rods. The original question was lost because there was more going on in the original post than what was originally revealed.

Now that Jon has acknowledged he's looking for more of a "pro-touring" ride we can work on his shock mounting questions. I'd say with your solution, he should probably also look into a monte-carlo bar like was used on most Fords.

Posted By: 72Swinger

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/07/12 02:45 PM

Quote:

Quote:

Sounds like you know it all, I am in wonder as to why you are on here asking a question, when your knowledge put you in this situation of bad ideas being implemeted.
And your bilstein buddy didnt engineer anything for you, just grabbed some off the shelf shocks and said they were made for you. Nice try. Real smart engineer buddy, put some longer shocks on a lowered car

Ok ladies and recliner seat engineers. I am the 'smart' engineer that set up these shocks for him. Lets start with the goal:

As a Bilstein employee I had a certain number of discounted shock purchases, I made the choice to use my last buy (before I quit that crap job) to hook Jon up with a set of pimping aftermarket race shocks since I knew he wanted to make his car into a nice road-race/auto-x vehicle. Yes I could have gotten him a regular set of Joe Schmoe crimp shocks (like the ones you all buy from Hotchkis) but I felt a better use of my buy would be to set him up with a set of threaded body motor-sport shocks with adjustable shafts.

Key words here are mono-tube and adjustable shafts, lets say that one more time so it sticks... mono-tube and adjustable shafts. Ok now that we're clear with that I'll fill you in on a little bit of basic shock knowledge since you clearly lack any.

Mono-tubes are a great design, less cavitation, better heat transfer characteristics etc. But they have some downsides too, one of them being added deadlength due to the dividing piston (the little cuppy thing that seperates the gasy chamber from the oily stuff). And the gasy chamber (the place with the hissy stuff). This makes it difficult to hit short compressed lengths with a given travel. On that note, guess what car has a short compressed length for the given amount of travel... yep A-body mopars! Have a cookie.

The other con that applies to this application is if you want adjustable damping you more or less NEED to have an adjustable shaft (unless it's a reservoir shock which this isn't). Twin tubes do not have this issue as you can place an adjustable base valve between the chambers and locate it various places on the shock.

So we have a shock that is already on the limits of what monotubes are capable of... well lets throw this next little variable into the party and see how fun it gets.

There are only so many lengths of adjustable shafts available. They don't just make adjustable shafts at lengths of every 10mm, they are made for specific applications. On top of that there are very few pin mount shafts available, the only ones that Bilstein had at the time were incredibly expensive PSS style shafts which are like $800 a piece so obviously this was not an option. The only option were rod-end style shafts.

So now we have a shock that is on the limits of mono-tube capabilities AND we have to use an eye-ring style rod end that ADDs deadlength... Hey guess what? We can't hit those numbers we were aiming for. Not only that but there are only certain lengths of shock tubes available and only certain lengths of adjustable shafts.

The logical choice is, screw the compressed length, hit the required travel length and ensure the extended is in the right range.

The idea is simple, it can be seen on most older ford products:

You make a hole for the shaft through the inner fenders and extend it's location. Obviously there are different ways to accomplish this, you can do something similar to what ford did, and make a little mount that bolts to the stock inner fender and extends the upper mount a little higher to gain some compressed length. Or the better stiffer stronger way is to weld in some chassis tubing, cut out the inner fenders and mount the shocks to them.

Lets be clear on this, the shocks have the same if not more travel length than the vehicle needs, the compressed and extended are simply longer. Oh and the rears will bolt in with little more than heim spacers.

Cool so be a good buddy and get over there and help get those front shocks on already......

Posted By: runinonmt

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/07/12 04:49 PM

As usual Ford has a way to make parts more universal. Seems the way to go if you want to keep the Bilsteins. This is obviously not a resto. Let us know how it works out and what your final solution is.
Ron

Posted By: 1_WILD_RT

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/07/12 06:10 PM

Quote:

Cool so be a good buddy and get over there and help get those front shocks on already......

CBK can't even get out to his own garage & get his Charger running, never mind about Jon's shocks....

Heck most of the members here probably don't even know what "The Haze" is.... Or is that "Was"...

Now if I've poked at Eric enough maybe he'll prove me wrong by getting the baddest street car in the San Diego area back on the road....

Posted By: autoxcuda

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/07/12 06:29 PM

Quote:

...
You make a hole for the shaft through the inner fenders and extend it's location. Obviously there are different ways to accomplish this, you can do something similar to what ford did, and make a little mount that bolts to the stock inner fender and extends the upper mount a little higher to gain some compressed length. Or the better stiffer stronger way is to weld in some chassis tubing, cut out the inner fenders and mount the shocks to them.

Lets be clear on this, the shocks have the same if not more travel length than the vehicle needs, the compressed and extended are simply longer. Oh and the rears will bolt in with little more than heim spacers.

I got these at a swap meet (of course) from a guy with a early mustang setup for track days. They are long too. Now I understand why. Thank you Coke_Bottle_Kid for the explanation.

Also if you set up your car for these longer shocks and mounting style, you will way open up the choices for shocks to all the racing standard stuff for your car and the price will be lower due to volume.

Coke_Bottle_Kid, do this look like a good Dyno curve for a road racing front shock?

Did this on a Maxwell Dyno we have for our circle track team:

Posted By: cageman

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/07/12 11:04 PM

maybe while your at it you can mount the torsion bar to the upper control arm too.

Posted By: Jjs72D

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/08/12 12:23 AM

Quote:

Ok ladies and recliner seat engineers. I am the 'smart' engineer that set up these shocks for him. ( Wow, condescend much?) Yes I could have gotten him a regular set of Joe Schmoe crimp shocks like the ones you all buy from Hotchkis ( Yeah, lets log on and bash a paid sponsor. GREAT idea.)
Ok now that we're clear with that I'll fill you in on a little bit of basic shock knowledge since you clearly lack any. (Here we go again. Thank you messiah for your wisdom and insight)

yep A-body mopars! Have a cookie.(Sad attempt at humor?)

You make a hole for the shaft through the inner fenders and extend it's location. (THIS seems like a bad idea for a street car unless the area is well gussetted afterwards, a subject that wasn't covered by the guy that started this post.) ....cut out the inner fenders and mount the shocks to them.

You are obviously very smart and while I respect that, your demeanor smacks of "How dare you challenge my authority!" A softer touch would have served you better.

Posted By: autoxcuda

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/08/12 03:23 AM

Quote:

Quote:

Ok ladies and recliner seat engineers. I am the 'smart' engineer that set up these shocks for him. ( Wow, condescend much?) Yes I could have gotten him a regular set of Joe Schmoe crimp shocks like the ones you all buy from Hotchkis ( Yeah, lets log on and bash a paid sponsor. GREAT idea.)
Ok now that we're clear with that I'll fill you in on a little bit of basic shock knowledge since you clearly lack any. (Here we go again. Thank you messiah for your wisdom and insight)

yep A-body mopars! Have a cookie.(Sad attempt at humor?)

You make a hole for the shaft through the inner fenders and extend it's location. (THIS seems like a bad idea for a street car unless the area is well gussetted afterwards, a subject that wasn't covered by the guy that started this post.) ....cut out the inner fenders and mount the shocks to them.

You are obviously very smart and while I respect that, your demeanor smacks of "How dare you challenge my authority!" A softer touch would have served you better.

Someone choose to take a "shot" at him first. He surely didn't take the higher ground, but lets call it even and move on. He gave an explanation of his choices and gave insight on things most I believe didn't consider before (I didn't).

But I admit the background and "whole story" around the original post keeps unfolding makes giving advice really really tough.

I don't understand why a second "shot" was necessary though.

Posted By: 72Swinger

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/08/12 05:04 AM

Why doesnt Bilstein use weld-on shaft eyes? With an external thread body and internal thread cap that would shorten the compressed length a bit.

Posted By: CokeBottleKid

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/09/12 11:11 AM

Steve - without knowing anything about the chassis the graphs mean nothing, also the valving was a separate group at Bilstein so I had very little involvement with that aspect. The graphs look good and it appears the valving is digressive.

72 swinger - I'm not sure what you're referring to, welded eye on the piston rod of the shock? If so that wouldn't work for an adjustable piston rod design (at least not easily).

And I'm not bashing Hotchkis at all, just pointing out these shocks are way more exotic (and expensive) than the already lightyears-better-than-stock shocks they sell.

Posted By: cageman

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/10/12 01:23 AM

Hmm, explain how they are light years ahead, they have the same guts all my bilsteins have

I can take any reg ol bilstein and put any ol valve in em I want, for 64 and 114 bucks a piece, and they will be a better shock than your fancy unengineered have to cut the car apart shocks that are adjustable. If you cant figure out how to put a shock on a car with out hacking the car, you really have no clue on what valving should be, so the adjustable part will just get you out of the ball park more than youll be in it. If you dont know how to walk, you have no business running. Your used car salesman tactics havent fooled me one bit.

Posted By: CokeBottleKid

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/10/12 06:54 AM

Quote:

Hmm, explain how they are light years ahead, they have the same guts all my bilsteins have
I can take any reg ol bilstein and put any ol valve in em I want, for 64 and 114 bucks a piece, and they will be a better shock than your fancy unengineered have to cut the car apart shocks that are adjustable. If you cant figure out how to put a shock on a car with out hacking the car, you really have no clue on what valving should be, so the adjustable part will just get you out of the ball park more than youll be in it. If you dont know how to walk, you have no business running. Your used car salesman tactics havent fooled me one bit.

Hey Backwoods moron, read my post again and stop taking sentences out of context.

I said

Quote:

more exotic (and expensive) than the already lightyears-better-than-stock shocks they sell.

I was referring to the regular Bilsteins Hotchkis sells as being lightyears better than stock mopar shocks.

I only stated the shocks I gave him are way more exotic and expensive than regular steel body Bilsteins.

IE:

- These are threaded aluminum body shocks vs. steel smooth body
- Shrader valve filled shocks rather than formed tube which means they are bench rebuildable vs. send them back to Bilstein only.
-Snap-ring guide vs. crimp guide which means you can rebuild them vs. throw them away.
-Adjustable piston rod vs. non adjustable piston rod
-Heim ends vs. Bushings

But by all means everyone should listen to you instead of someone that worked as an Engineer at Bilstein.

Posted By: Jjs72D

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/10/12 07:33 AM

Excuse me, Mr Coke Bottle Kid!
I think that the problem that us simple folk had here may have been with the fact that while a "free" set of shocks seems like a nice gesture, the modifications needed to fit them may be extensive. I'll take your word that they may be fantastic for the mans car if all the changes are made to fit them.
Your comments are a clear example of anonymous internet bullying. A fair and reasonable person wouldn't result to calling people a "backwoods moron".
Jeff

Posted By: cageman

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/10/12 08:34 AM

Explain why a threaded body is advantagous? Heim ends on the street arent any good, but I guess you think it is. schrader valve, and rebuildable, why would I need that, they are adjustable. Unless you like to change oil every ten miles, then by all means. But to bad they are too long, you bottom that bad boy out, you ruin the end cap and seal, where the snap ring end caps give a little.

And here I thought I was a cityboy, guess not.

Posted By: autoxcuda

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/11/12 03:45 AM

Coke_Bottle_Kid and Cageman, could we just quit this name calling!!

It's not helping anyone.

Posted By: autoxcuda

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/11/12 03:48 AM

Quote:

...
I can take any reg ol bilstein and put any ol valve in em I want, for 64 and 114 bucks a piece,...

Could you list the part numbers or models for this bilstein shock?

Is it a fully adjustable mono tube shock that will fit stock in the stock mounts up front?

Posted By: 72Swinger

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/11/12 04:09 AM

Quote:

Explain why a threaded body is advantagous? Heim ends on the street arent any good, but I guess you think it is. schrader valve, and rebuildable, why would I need that, they are adjustable. Unless you like to change oil every ten miles, then by all means. But to bad they are too long, you bottom that bad boy out, you ruin the end cap and seal, where the snap ring end caps give a little.

And here I thought I was a cityboy, guess not.

an externally threaded body allows the end cap to be threaded onto the outside of the body instead of into the body. Couple that with a welded shaft eye and you can usually gain 2" of travel to a similar travel shock but in a 2" shorter compressed length. I'm not an ex bilstein employee but I have figured that much out working with King on my old truck.

Posted By: pauly v.100

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/11/12 05:16 AM

Posted By: TC@HP2

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/11/12 03:08 PM

FWIW, XV offers custom valved shocks in twin and mono tube, with or without adjustability, for lowered mopars in a very reasonable price range.

http://www.xvmotorsports.com/products/detail/index.cfm?nPID=290&cid=2&cdesc=Suspension

Posted By: Rick_Ehrenberg

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/11/12 03:56 PM

Once past the personal / political crap, it seems to boil down to this:

1. He attached the outer tie rod ends to the TOP of the knuckle arm for wheel clearance. This will, of course, drive bump steer numbers off the chart!

2. He's using Heim joint for tie rod ends. To me, this is very scary, and banned at many tracks.

Any non-political / personal comments?

Rick

Posted By: VL21

Re: '71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs! - 04/16/12 10:16 PM

basic shock knowledge since you clearly lack any.

(the little cuppy thing that seperates the gasy chamber from the oily stuff). And the gasy chamber (the place with the hissy stuff)

...place with the hissy stuff? I always thought that was Moparts!

'71 Duster Front Suspension Woahs!