Beginner's Bucks-Down /6 Build...Suggestions Welcome
Interesting reading, I also thought a front sway bar would be added first. I would like to improve handling in my 72 Valiant. Not for performance, more for like evasive maneuvers. Does anyone know where I can read up on this?
There is a Fred Puhm book from 20+ years ago called "How to Make Your Car Handle". It has a loot of good stuff to start with and when you learn more, then you can find a lot of things that you did not see at first in that book. It is an all around primer, with some generalizations, not the end-all book for any particular car.
Research what is called 'roll stiffness'. There are 2 contributors to roll stiffness: the springs and the anti-roll bars. Without any roll stiffness, the car rolls way over in the turns, the tires are no longer vertical on the road, and the inside tires don't help corner; all the weight transfers to the outside in a severe case. Keeping the car flatter with increased roll stiffness prevents as much net weight transfer to the outside tires and tneds to keep the tires more upright. You gain to a certain point with added roll stiffness, but if you get too flat with too much roll stiffness, then you start losing again (for stock tires; racing tires can take advantage of more roll stiffness).
When you make one end's roll stiffness very large (like putting high roll stiffness upfront with very stiff front springs and a huge front anti-sway bar with no rear anit-sway bar and soft rear springs), then you get almost all of the weight transfer to the front outside tire and it takes the lion's share of the corneing load and the front understeers badly (the car pushes or plows). Reverse that, with too much roll stiffness in the rear, and the car oversteers with the rear acting loose. With slick or rough pavement, or on loose gravel or wet leaves, the push or loose condition gets exaggerated very quickly.
So unless you have really stiff rear springs already, then a mild rear anti-sway bar may be in order. Ideally, you would change out the rear multi-leafs for a mono-leaf to get better rear spring linearity, but I don't know if anyone makes a monoleaf for any Mopars. GM used them some around 1970 models for better handling of some special models of live rear axle Novas and such. (I do know that a 1976 Dart Lite weight and springing was pretty neutral under mild braking, for whatever that is worth. But the rear end was kinda light to start with....)
And I have always thought that a panhard rod might make the A body stay centered over the rear axle better. I raced a bunch of cars with panhards rods as a standard piece; the feel of the rear 'staying stable under the car' and the consitency of the cornering was a lot better than a standard Dodge Dart cornering stance.
