Ride quality even worse than expected. Advice welcome.
A few questions you still haven't answered-
What are your current alignment specs? "Feeling jittery" could easily just be an alignment issue. But there's a few things in that list of parts that really makes me scratch my head.
Why the camber spacers? With the QA1 UCA's you shouldn't need them at all. With 15's and lousy tires on a street car you wouldn't even want a full -1° of camber. The Mancini spacers add -2°. With those UCA's you shouldn't have any problems running close to -1° of camber with +4° or more of caster without any additions at all. If you haven't aligned the car, stop and do that.
Why the lowering blocks? The hotchkis leaf springs should sit the back end of the car pretty low. As in, lower than your car appears to be sitting right now. And that's without the lowering blocks. Seems to me like something is going on there. The only time I've seen anyone use lowering blocks of that size to end up at a similar ride height they were using super stocks. Are you using the Hotchkis front hangers? Or something else with multiple spring bolt locations?
You have adjustable strut rods. How did you set the length? Did you check for binding through the entire range of suspension travel? If the mounts aren't clocked correctly at the front, the heims will bind. If they're not the right length, the LCA's can bind.
The QA1 LCA's come with rubber LCA bushings. So, they MUST be torqued while the car is sitting at ride height. Before the car is on its wheels they should only be hand tight. If that wasn't done, you may have torn the bushings on your first drive, and the noise you hear is because your LCA bushings are toast again. I don't know why QA1 doesn't install poly or Delrin bushings, but they don't.
Any marks on your tires? Or on the wheel wells? You could be getting tire interference too. The tires aren't the absolute biggest you can run on a Dart Sport, but they're still more than big enough to cause issues if the backspace isn't close.
Banging and clunking means something is loose, interfering with something else, broken, or you ran out of suspension travel. At the ride height your car is at, you can't use any of the stock bump stops. Period. They were designed for the stock height and nothing else. The upper bump stops (the ones for the UCA's) need to be taller. The 1.14's don't twist much and have almost no built in clocking, so fully unloaded you can drop the LCA's off the adjusting bolts. So, you usually need to add a taller bump stop. You're re-centering the bump stops around the new ride height. The lowers have to be shorter. But you have QA1 lowers, so....
This!
QA1 LCA's are one of two versions. The early ones don't have any bump stops at all. None. So unless you mounted the stock lower bump stops somehow/somewhere, there's no bump stop. Now, with 1.14" bars and that ride height you shouldn't actually have an interference problem. The bump stop-less QA1 LCA's have a lower profile height than a stock LCA, and because of that they add almost a full 1" back into the suspension travel. That's a 2" height drop at the wheel. That's the kind I run, and that's why. I did add bump stops back onto my frame stops, but just the little poly disks shown in the linked threads above. Just to keep from going metal on metal.
The latest version of the QA1 LCA's has a bump stop. A pretty large poly bump stop. I haven't laid hands on one of those yet, but just based on the pictures I'd wager they actually reduce travel with the bump stop they come with. So if you have those, you could be sitting on the bump stops at your ride height. And those are poly stops, so, unlike the stock rubber bump stops there's little to no cushion. If you're bottoming those out the ride quality will be terrible.
With a 1.14" torsion bar, you'll need close to 1" from the bump stop to the frame at ride height if you intend to stay off the bump stops most of the time. I run just under that with my 1.12" bars, so you may get away with a little less, but it depends on the weight of your car too. You still have all the stock '74 stuff up front, so you're hanging more weight off the front of that car than I am now.
So-
A few questions you still haven't answered-
What are your current alignment specs? "Feeling jittery" could easily just be an alignment issue. But there's a few things in that list of parts that really makes me scratch my head.
Why the camber spacers? With the QA1 UCA's you shouldn't need them at all. With 15's and lousy tires on a street car you wouldn't even want a full -1° of camber. The Mancini spacers add -2°. With those UCA's you shouldn't have any problems running close to -1° of camber with +4° or more of caster without any additions at all. If you haven't aligned the car, stop and do that.
Why the lowering blocks? The hotchkis leaf springs should sit the back end of the car pretty low. As in, lower than your car appears to be sitting right now. And that's without the lowering blocks. Seems to me like something is going on there. The only time I've seen anyone use lowering blocks of that size to end up at a similar ride height they were using super stocks. Are you using the Hotchkis front hangers? Or something else with multiple spring bolt locations?
You have adjustable strut rods. How did you set the length? Did you check for binding through the entire range of suspension travel? If the mounts aren't clocked correctly at the front, the heims will bind. If they're not the right length, the LCA's can bind.
The QA1 LCA's come with rubber LCA bushings. So, they MUST be torqued while the car is sitting at ride height. Before the car is on its wheels they should only be hand tight. If that wasn't done, you may have torn the bushings on your first drive, and the noise you hear is because your LCA bushings are toast again. I don't know why QA1 doesn't install poly or Delrin bushings, but they don't.
Any marks on your tires? Or on the wheel wells? You could be getting tire interference too. The tires aren't the absolute biggest you can run on a Dart Sport, but they're still more than big enough to cause issues if the backspace isn't close.
Banging and clunking means something is loose, interfering with something else, broken, or you ran out of suspension travel. At the ride height your car is at, you can't use any of the stock bump stops. Period. They were designed for the stock height and nothing else. The upper bump stops (the ones for the UCA's) need to be taller. The 1.14's don't twist much and have almost no built in clocking, so fully unloaded you can drop the LCA's off the adjusting bolts. So, you usually need to add a taller bump stop. You're re-centering the bump stops around the new ride height. The lowers have to be shorter. But you have QA1 lowers, so....
This!
QA1 LCA's are one of two versions. The early ones don't have any bump stops at all. None. So unless you mounted the stock lower bump stops somehow/somewhere, there's no bump stop. Now, with 1.14" bars and that ride height you shouldn't actually have an interference problem. The bump stop-less QA1 LCA's have a lower profile height than a stock LCA, and because of that they add almost a full 1" back into the suspension travel. That's a 2" height drop at the wheel. That's the kind I run, and that's why. I did add bump stops back onto my frame stops, but just the little poly disks shown in the linked threads above. Just to keep from going metal on metal.
The latest version of the QA1 LCA's has a bump stop. A pretty large poly bump stop. I haven't laid hands on one of those yet, but just based on the pictures I'd wager they actually reduce travel with the bump stop they come with. So if you have those, you could be sitting on the bump stops at your ride height. And those are poly stops, so, unlike the stock rubber bump stops there's little to no cushion. If you're bottoming those out the ride quality will be terrible.
With a 1.14" torsion bar, you'll need close to 1" from the bump stop to the frame at ride height if you intend to stay off the bump stops most of the time. I run just under that with my 1.12" bars, so you may get away with a little less, but it depends on the weight of your car too. You still have all the stock '74 stuff up front, so you're hanging more weight off the front of that car than I am now.
So-
- Inspect your LCA bushings
- Check your LCA bump stop to frame distance at ride height
- Inspect your rear suspension, because you should't need blocks with Hotchkis leafs
- Get a proper alignment if none of that turns up anything
