A 440 A-Body... that can handle?
Here's the Barracuda...
302 Found
That car handled very well Jim although I think it might have even been better with bigger sway bars cause there is an exccessive amount of body roll.
WARNING: LONG BIT OF INFORMATION FOR ANYBODY WHO NEEDS TO KNOW THE BASICS, IF YOU KNOW ALOT ABOUT HANDLING, DON'T WASTE YOU'RE TIME HERE. IF YOU DON'T AND WANT TO KNOW WHY WE'RE MAKING OUR SUGGESTIONS, READ ON FOR HANDLING 101.
Just so the OP understands, if you seen in this video how much the car is leaning in the turns, that's called body roll. Body roll is almost always a bad thing because the tires lean as well as the body and that causes the contact path between the tires and the road surface to decrease which gives less traction and reduced handling.
Stiffer springs reduce that issue obviously, but other things to consider are sway bars. Sway bars work by tying the left side tire to the corresponding right side. Example, when entering a righthand corner, inertia will pull the car and make it lean to the left (body roll). The leftside wheel is pushed further into the wheel well and the right side is pulled further down. Sway bars work like torsion bars, when the lefside wheel is pushed into the wheel well the torsion bar twists like a spring and forces the right side wheel further into the wheel well as well, what this accomplishes is it keeps the from leaning (body roll).
Other ways to reduce body roll is performance shocks (NOT DRAG SHOCKS!) to help dampen or slow the body roll down so it's not so sudden. That way if you do something to extreme and push the car past it's limit, you'll have more time to find out and react.
Rebuilding the suspenion with polygraphite bushings is a great way to improve handling because they are stiffer than rubber which eliminates supsension flex. ADDED BONUS: They self lubricate! No more greasing the front end! :cheers:
Another great way to reduce body as well as alot of other issues is to install subframe connectors. These older mopars came after the age of full fram cars. They utilize unitized body construction, meaning the body and the frame are one. The frame rails in the front end somewhere under the driver's knees and the rear rails start end at the back of the rear seat, everything in between is the floor boards and the the roof providing structural rigidity. Subframe connectors are basically weld in tube frame stock that ties the front and rear frames together to resist twist motion on the car caused by hard acceleration and/or cornering. A rollcage adds a lot of rigidity but of course IS not recommended for daily driver's.
Low profile tires, albeit ugly, do help handling because the lower sidewall height means less sidewall flex. this means, more responiveness and more traction in corners.
Further more the last two equations to solve handling are proper suspension alignment which is too complecated to lay out here, and proper weight distribution. You want 50/50 weight distribution between the front and rear of the vehicle. Aluminum and fiberglas parts on the front of the car can aid in getting closer to that number.