Upgrading a Fairly Stock Suspension

autoxcuda said
IMHO, you are way far on your Dart project from buying front suspension. You have all kinds of safety and realiablity issues to resolve first before buying any upgrades.

But after you get that all done...

An economical first major step would be:

Tire upgrade: 225/60/15 or 225/60/14 minimun. 16", 17" rim with better rubber would be great too.

front and rear sway bars. Hellwig if you are on a budget.
1" to 1.03" Torsion bars. The ones that go on sale.
Moog front suspension parts as necessary
Moog offset K7103 upper control arm bushings
Bilstein RCD shocks. KYB's on a tighter budget.

I'd try running that power steering pump pressure reducing deal the Ehrenberg wrote about in Mopar Action magazine before buying a rebuilt steering box just to get the firm feel.

All that will make it feel completely different/better for not a whole lot of money.

You have front KH disks right now. When you get them working properly, they work well with a starting suspension upgrade.

Thanks! I've been waiting for you to chime in. :D I will not be installing any suspension components or anything till the car is running and driving safely. As far as I can tell, and I may have forgotten something on my list, the two major things that need to be repaired are the steering coupler and shaft (which I have on me) and fixing the firewall along with installing the new MC (where I think I've come to my decision on what I want to do). These will be tackled within the next month or so (along with replacing hoses and flushing the radiator). We'll see how it runs after that if anything mechanical needs to be fixed or swapped out.

With regards to wheels, I don't really want to swap out new wheels and tires, especially since I'm still on the sbp. But maybe I'll look around for some tires I can mount on there. However, I don't know how wide my wheels are (I'm thinking 4.5-5.5") and a 225 might be too wide for them.

I'm not necessarily on a strict/tight budget. I would just like to upgrade that part once and not have to worry about it or feel like I should upgrade it again for a long while.

O, and does Hellwig even have tubular sway bars for A bodies and if they do, do you know how much they cost and where to get them?

But thanks (everyone) for giving me a starting point to think about! :blob: