I've talked about my suspension mods a lot but so far, I'm not really happy with how it drives yet. I realize that I have more parts to buy, more tuning and more work ahead but this is where my car is right now and I would love some advice on where to go next.
'73 Dart Sport, original 318 car (Magnum 5.9 swap)
8 3/4" rear with 4.10 Eaton TrueTrac
Built A904 (until I can afford the T56 conversion)
Non-power brakes
Stock front disks Ford Explorer rear disks
Manual 16:1 steering with Tuff Wheel replica
Aluminum wheels 15x8 +0mm rear and 15x7 +10mm front
255/60/15 rear Radial T/As (ugh)
225/60/15 front Radial T/As (ugh).
Stock front sway bar, no rear sway bar
QA1 Upper and Lower control arms
Sway-A-Way 1.14" torsion bars
Hotchkis lowering leaf springs
Fox 1.5 shocks (Hotchkis)
Mancini Camber spacers
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE driving it...but in general it feels like it needs a lot of work before it drives anything like I had hoped.
A few specific points of concern:
1)Brand new (re-man) steering box but there's still a ton of play (20*-30*?) in the steering and it really spoils the driving experience.
2) Alignment...I'm still trying to figure out what else I need to replace to fix the awful steering action and I'm trying to decide on a ride height so I'm hesitant to pay for a professional alignment just yet but I've made a lot of adjustments to camber and toe just playing around with it and it tracks nice and straight though I'm sure it's far from optimized for handling.
3)Something's not right in the rear end. The springs seem way too stiff. I know the Hotchkis springs are much heavier than stock but it feels really rigid when I push down on the bumper and a couple of times it has really gotten jittery over bumps in a way that spooked me.
4)Something else weird with the rear- the car is straight, never hit, everything looks to be lined up correctly yet the driver's side sits slightly higher in the rear than the passenger side. Could this be related to the shackles binding? I just don't know what else could cause this...
5) Something's just weird with the feel on turn-in. It's really hard for me to explain it but it's like the chassis settles in the wrong direction when loading up on a curve.
I'm far from giving up...I just know that a properly set-up Mopar can be a great handling and satisfying car to drive...I'm mostly flailing around in the dark though AutoXCuda and 72BlunBlu (over on the Abodies forum) have helped a ton already through their threads as well as direct answers.
Any thoughts, advice, appropriately phrased insults, etc. are welcome.
I don’t have much footage of the car in action but when watching this quick clip, Something looks odd...Is there something weird about how the front end moves here? I know...not much to go on but it almost looks like there's no suspension travel at all?
https://youtu.be/76aQKC2U7zc
