I have an Alter-k-tion car and I have had many torsion bar cars. One reason I went with Alter-k-tion was because of the headers, rack and pinion, and brakes. At the time there were no brake upgrades for Mopar and now there is Wilwood, Viper, Baer,....
Can't beat the Flaming River rack feel. It's amazing. I will possibly be upgrading trying out the non-power "road race" rack they have.
Headers? With my engine build I needed 1-7/8" headers. You're not getting those around big torsion bars. Even the TTi 1-7/8" won't fit without skinny little dinky t-bars. I use a Hedman header that was made for drag cars without t-bars so it's a shelf header. 1-7/8 headers for t-bar cars have to be custom or modified TTi's, adding to the cost.
A benefit is that these types of suspensions do weigh less and they are easy to tune without have multiple sets of torsion bars.
There is a place for them. It's all application specific and I do think some people jump to the MustangII style suspensions often without even having the challenges I list above. At that point it's just people not looking at all the options. And that's okay. They won't be getting anything that's not unsafe or irreversible.
Now with all that being said, I have collected all the torsion bar front suspension pieces for my Valiant and , while I'm not a receipts keeper, it's expensive as hell to have a balls out torsion bar car.
-Borgeson System, BIG torsion bars, K-frame stiffening and fab, SPC UCA's, whiz bang strut rods, 11/16 tie rods, FF idler arm bearing, Hotchkis shocks, 1.25" sway bar, reinforced LCA's, Viper brakes, Modifying the TTi's for the torsion bars ....
It's not like an astronomical savings to build an equivalent performing torsion bar car especially since you've got QA1 in the game now. Matter of fact I wish I would have kept all the receipts because I bet I have more money in the Valiant's suspension than a QA1 system costs.
It's just different strokes for different folks. I like the Alter-k-tion but I wanted to build the Valiant in the Green Brick fashion and use OEM style components. I'll be racing at Auto Club in the NMCA series against a butt ton of very high dollar cars with all the heavy hitters in the suspension game. Tom Kamman (Toms Purple Valiant) races up there in his Vette now. He's killing it BTW. I would love to see the little A-body embarrass some $150k cars.
