Torsion bar numbers???
Would a 1.03" give you a decent ride in an E-body? I currently have 0.8X" in mine and was thinking of going 0.96", but the over 1" sounds like I might be happier. But if the ride is too firm, wife will kill me. It's her car.
Small block car? Or /6? The only B/E body torsion bars that are in the .8x range are the .840 drag race only bar and the .86" /6 bar. Wheel rate on those are 80 lb/in and 90/lb in, respectively. If that's the case, those are
ridiculously soft.
The biggest thing about upgrading the torsion bars is also upgrading the shocks to match. Stock replacement shocks aren't designed to handle the wheel rates that larger bars provide, so they don't work properly and the ride suffers.
I have 1.12" torsion bars on my 318 Challenger. Those have a 270 lb/in wheel rate. I ran them with KYB's for a long time, and recently upgraded to Bilstein RCD's. Talk about a huge difference! I think my Challenger rides great with the 1.12" bars, Bilsteins, and 17" rims. But it doesn't ride like an old musclecar, it rides a lot more like a modern car. It also handles a lot better, which was the point. Same with the 1.12" bars on my Duster, they have a 300 lb/in wheel rate and I run them with Hotchkis Fox shocks. I set the Duster up with AutoX in mind, but I use it as my daily driver, and still don't think the suspension is "too stiff". And it also has Helwig sway bars and 18" rims.
The PST 1.03" bars for the B/E bodies have a 209 lb/in wheel rate. That's more than double the wheel rate from what you've got now. It will be a big change, there's no doubt about that. IMHO it will be a big change for the better, but ride quality is very subjective and a lot of people will probably disagree. I ran 1" bars on my Duster and found them too soft for me still, and they're usually in the 190 lb/in range, so, not that different from the 1.03's. They did improve handing quite a bit from stock, and I thought the ride quality was still on the soft side. Obviously stiffer than factory, but the factory bars are so soft I think they hurt the ride quality because you often hit the bumpstops, and the body roll when cornering, heck even just turning the wheel a little, is ridiculous.