Suspension advice
Here's the wheel fitment pics I mentioned by PM.
http://www.forabodiesonly.com/mopar/showthread.php?p=1969806924#post1969806924
The first pic was an accidental post but shows upper ball joint clearance with a 245/45/18.
I'm curious to hear comments about the ball joint angle in the second pic. This is on the bump stops. If guys are running with trimmed bump stops and the ball joints survive, perhaps its not an issue.
Yikes!
Obviously, you can't run the suspension with the LCA's on the lower bumpstops. Guys running trimmed bumpstops aren't spending any amount of time with the ball joints at those kinds of angles, even though they do run shorter bumpstops to stay off of them because they don't want the bumpstop effecting their handling.
For suspension geometry, you shouldn't run the LCA with any higher than parallel to the ground. Now, even that doesn't give you a whole lot of clearance for suspension travel, hence the trimmed bumpstops. Which is when you chime in with the balljoint angle picture. But, if you're running that low to the ground for
handling, then you have some big torsion bars down there. Which reduces the amount of travel your suspension uses, so, you don't need to use that travel very often. So the balljoints don't spend all that much time at the angle you show in the picture, which shows the LCA well past parallel and angled up.
This is why you can't lower your car and run /6 torsion bars. And for that matter, how many guys with /6 torsion bars bottom out their suspension all the time? Seem to recall more than few posts about that.
Now, if you want lower to the ground than your car sits when the LCA is parallel to the ground, then you need drop spindles. Or air ride.
Nothing wrong with drop spindles, I ran them on my Challenger for awhile. Probably close to 30k miles actually. They do re-introduce the tie rod clearance issue for those folks running 17 or 18" rims, so you're limited on the amount of backspace you can run, just like if you were running 15" rims.
Maybe Steve (autoxcuda) will chime in on how long his ball joints last. I know he probably runs around with the LCA's parallel to the ground or close to it, I know he runs the smaller bumpstops and trimmed off the "tab" that sticks up from the bumpstop mount on the LCA.
