My brother wants to get rid of the torsion bars and K-frame to run a coil over setup on a Dart for the street he is building. So I am wondering what many of you who have done this are running. He does not want to spend a ton of cash on it but wants to run a nice setup. I have not used any and don't know much about which are the good ones. So I would love to hear what you all have run and recommend. Thanks , Ron

tubular suspension

What he wants to do is very expensive and totally unnecessary on a street driven car. Money would be much better spent on a o/d trans and big brakes. Just my 2 cents.

Tell him to sell the Dart and buy a Mustang II. There is no benefit on the street and lateral sway is actually worse. Not to mention that the road shock is completely absorbed by the front rails, and not distributed into the unibody as intended. On a Mopar, it's a gimmick.

That takes him out of the game right there !!

The original builder of Chrysler K-Frames was AO Smith , the sdame people that made water heaters

I have seen in my time some horrible looking , worn out, rusted cracked crappy 40 plus year ol K-Frames

I'm not a restored type of car person, seen enough and drove enough as a kid .

I put a Alterkation on my Valiant ..there is 1000's of these out there and I have not heard of anyone with issues ,seems like everyone is very happy

On my 67 , I installed a new set up from

Carl Gerst

http://gerstsuspensions.com/products/

Nice piece all well built, car drives great .. its a race car so ..

Neither of them are "cheap"

I'd say this conversion is not inexpensive at around $3000 +/-. What exactly is he hoping to accomplish with the tubular system that can't be done with the stock system?

for a lot less money ........

Here is after market K frames in a nut shell. Would they survive the 3 years of driving of a 16 year old going through high school? And would you turn your 16 year old son loose with a car that has one?

RMS makes one of the best.Not really cheap but not pricey either.Ive seen quite a few old stockers that are junk.Saly potholes etc take a toll.Let alone with say RMS you have lots more rooms.Bill makes a nice piece.If my 65 wasnt a rust bucket Id have one in it.Rocky

A friend has one of those kits, early b-body. He was turning backing up in his driveway and sheared a 3/4" grade 8 bolt, off the lower control arm. Poor design in my opinion and just shows the steering geometry is off on these "kits", outside tire was sliding instead of rolling. The company made an upgrade piece to be welded on but the inherent problem is still there.
If he has a full cage with bars tying in the front frame to distribute the forces of coil overs then that would be the only way I would use one. Like one said above, the car is not designed for that. Also $$$, three of my friends went together to get a deal on this k-frame kit, still cost them around $3500 each just for parts.

Seems to me that all the worrying about if they're OK or not is moot because the OP said inexpensive and was pointed out above, you cannot go tubular K-frame for cheap.

AO Smith made a lot of car frames including the Corvette. I ran into an old AO Smith employee who worked welding frames and he said that every year, AO Smith would build a complete rolling chassis for a Chrysler car and would have Mopar brass drive it to see how much quieter it was. They got turned down every year.

To me, the worst thing about the torsion bar suspension is where the torsion bars are located, right in the way of everything.

One fact in the Chrysler suspension's favor is the reduction of unsprung weight. On a coil spring car the lower half of the spring is counted against unsprung weight. More unsprung weight increases the work the damper (shock absorber) has to do to keep control of the wheel.

There was some good engineering in that suspension.

I'd suggest removing the K-frame, blasting it to get all the paint off it, inspecting for cracks, welding up any cracks and welding all of the seams. Then reblast and coat with the coating of your choice. Spend any available extra money on tubular A-arms and bushings. This should tighten up the front suspension 100%.

R.

A old beat up factory K is a good reason to do different, but there are still good cores out there.

Ive one of them high$ front end cars and as nice as it is, id not purchase another one, id just make a jig and copy the one I have.

running an altercation from RMS for 10 years no issue. Some say it's a waste of money but the same could be said for the other thousands of we dump into these cars to each there own.

When I said on the cheap I meant it don't need to be the most costly one. Of course we figure its not real cheap but he don't need the most costly one out there. We love the original K-frame set-up but seems someone over the years did some cutting around the trans crossmember and even though its welded up ok he don't want to chance running the torsion bars on it. So he is going to run a coil over setup type K-frame. I just want to know what any of you have used and how you like it. Thanks for the replies , Ron

Its been pointed out often enough that the tubular style front ends put the loads in places that aren't designed to take them. The torsion bar suspension puts all the load in the crossmember which is well supported to properly distribute the load. The tubular front ends put all the loads onto the front frame horns and it only stands to reason that without additional support there is going to be twisting from the crossmember forward.

While they look cool and provide some added clearance and some weight reduction, the only way I'd install one is if there was a full cage to tie the front end into.

I like how the people that reply are always the ones that don't own one..
spreading the gospel of the t-bar

rest of us, willing to try something else is almost always happy with the result and the costs involved


I would not purchase Magnum force anything however, seen them with my own two eyes fail ..

I don't own a rabid dog, but I don't need to in order to determine it's a bad idea.

My guess is bigdad would buy square wheels if someone made them.

There are thousands, if not millions, of companies out there who try to build a better mousetrap. They will actually invent benefits of their product even though they're aware of the genius of the original design. All to make a buck. Square wheels ... sure, the ride is rough but the car won't roll when its parked !!!

If you want a coilover front end that bad, go buy a car that was designed for it - a Ford or Chevy.