1973 Dart Suspension rebuild
I spent literally months rethinking and remeasuring to finally get what I wanted.
Literally hours and hours of pics online and different wheels are saved to my computer, and I must have Photoshopped 50 different wheels on my car.
Measured all the dimensions like wheel mount surface to leafs, wheel mount surface to outer fender lip, wheel mount surface to both inside and outside of the wheel house, and then drew a diagram with all those measurements.
I wanted wheels and tires to fill out the wheel well and get both as far to the outsides as I could get them because I didn't like the way the rears were tucked back inside the fender.
The 18 inch Ridler 695's I finally ordered had 5.5 backspace with a 9.5 inch rim.
Problem was I had exactly 5.5 inches from the wheel mount surface to the leafs.
I knew this going in and knew I was going to have to deal with it.
The tires are Nitto 40 series with a square edge profile and 9.5 inches of tread area, so the rims are exactly the width of the tires (because I wanted all the wheel I could get in there to show off a nice wide machined outer surface from the spokes to the rim edge.
Apparently I went about doing the spring move different than most.
I will be changing to a 8.25 sure grip so for now I slotted the spring perches holes so I could slide the springs in .5 inch.
Then took the rear hangers off and drilled them with new holes to move them to the inside right next to the frame rail (maybe 1/16 to 1/8 from the shackle bolt heads to the frame rail)
There was a little more to the rear brackets, but it's hard to explain without pics of how it was done.
On the front hangers I cut the top 2 studs off and slotted the bottom holes in the body and then marked and cut a square hole in the frame rail so the front eye big bolt head could recess into the frame rail.
The slotted holes let the bracket slide over so the bolt head went in the hole and then I drilled the center of the bracket and added a 1/2 bolt, washers and nut through the bracket and bracket mount surface.
Doing all this gave me 6 inches from the wheel mount surface to the leafs, so 1/2 clearance.
The wheels and tires are exactly centered in the wheel tub with 1 inch clearance on each side.
I also took 1/2 inch off the inner lip of the fender and wheel opening trim, by cutting just inside the screws for the trim, and then smoothed the cut down with a flap disc and sprayed the new edge with undercoat.
I can just barely get my fingers between the tire and inner lip now instead of having 2 inches there like before.
All in all I'm really happy with the way it turned out, but I sure wouldn't want to have to do it again any time soon.:D
The ride height pretty much has to be where it is due to the really shitty streets around here.
(In my opinion any street in a 25 mph speed limit area that can slam your K frame on the pavement with 1.03 torsion bars should be against the law):D
I recently added KYB monotube shocks on the front to help with that, and it did.
I spent literally months rethinking and remeasuring to finally get what I wanted.
Literally hours and hours of pics online and different wheels are saved to my computer, and I must have Photoshopped 50 different wheels on my car.
Measured all the dimensions like wheel mount surface to leafs, wheel mount surface to outer fender lip, wheel mount surface to both inside and outside of the wheel house, and then drew a diagram with all those measurements.
I wanted wheels and tires to fill out the wheel well and get both as far to the outsides as I could get them because I didn't like the way the rears were tucked back inside the fender.
The 18 inch Ridler 695's I finally ordered had 5.5 backspace with a 9.5 inch rim.
Problem was I had exactly 5.5 inches from the wheel mount surface to the leafs.
I knew this going in and knew I was going to have to deal with it.
The tires are Nitto 40 series with a square edge profile and 9.5 inches of tread area, so the rims are exactly the width of the tires (because I wanted all the wheel I could get in there to show off a nice wide machined outer surface from the spokes to the rim edge.
Apparently I went about doing the spring move different than most.
I will be changing to a 8.25 sure grip so for now I slotted the spring perches holes so I could slide the springs in .5 inch.
Then took the rear hangers off and drilled them with new holes to move them to the inside right next to the frame rail (maybe 1/16 to 1/8 from the shackle bolt heads to the frame rail)
There was a little more to the rear brackets, but it's hard to explain without pics of how it was done.
On the front hangers I cut the top 2 studs off and slotted the bottom holes in the body and then marked and cut a square hole in the frame rail so the front eye big bolt head could recess into the frame rail.
The slotted holes let the bracket slide over so the bolt head went in the hole and then I drilled the center of the bracket and added a 1/2 bolt, washers and nut through the bracket and bracket mount surface.
Doing all this gave me 6 inches from the wheel mount surface to the leafs, so 1/2 clearance.
The wheels and tires are exactly centered in the wheel tub with 1 inch clearance on each side.
I also took 1/2 inch off the inner lip of the fender and wheel opening trim, by cutting just inside the screws for the trim, and then smoothed the cut down with a flap disc and sprayed the new edge with undercoat.
I can just barely get my fingers between the tire and inner lip now instead of having 2 inches there like before.
All in all I'm really happy with the way it turned out, but I sure wouldn't want to have to do it again any time soon.:D
The ride height pretty much has to be where it is due to the really shitty streets around here.
(In my opinion any street in a 25 mph speed limit area that can slam your K frame on the pavement with 1.03 torsion bars should be against the law):D
I recently added KYB monotube shocks on the front to help with that, and it did.
