1.03 PST Torsion Bars

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GMachineDartGT

GMachineDartGT

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I want to hear FIRST hand who has had issues with the PST 1.03 torsion bars. These bars are not clocked leaving zero preload. This results with low ride height and no adjustment left on the adjustment bolts.

Please don't get off track here, I need some evidence from people who have had this issue.
 
First Off, I will be the first to agree with you on the fact that there is zero clocking on the 1.03" bars for the Abodies. The orientation is flat-flat because as you increase the bars diameter the less pre-load is needed. We have had no issues with the A Body bars but these are a pro-touring bar and we do state in some instances that it may lower the stance of the vehicle( Stated on our Website).

http://www.p-s-t.com/s.nl/it.A/id.6906/.f?sc=12

I will say that we have done a redesign on our B&E body torsion bar to a 20 degree offset. We have sold hundreds of these bars with only a handful of customers claiming a ride height issue and of those issues they were all with big block B&E body cars. But with about half of those customers it was a clocking issue upon installation and we were able to work with them on correcting the issue. The main reason that we did the redesign was that it was time to re-order from the forge and it was the perfect time to make the change and allow for more clocking/ride height adjustment.

If there is anything that I can help you with please let me know and I will try to work with you.

Thanks
James
 
They responded to your request for assistance in like 90minutes on a public board!
They offered help as well as an explanation.

Kudos

pete
 
There you go!- give the vendor a chance to correct or assist you--- hard to find a company like that anymore!! Cudos!!

hopefully you can get your ride to where you want it to be.

Lawrence
 
PST said:
First Off, I will be the first to agree with you on the fact that there is zero clocking on the 1.03" bars for the Abodies. The orientation is flat-flat because as you increase the bars diameter the less pre-load is needed. We have had no issues with the A Body bars but these are a pro-touring bar and we do state in some instances that it may lower the stance of the vehicle( Stated on our Website).

http://www.p-s-t.com/s.nl/it.A/id.6906/.f?sc=12

I will say that we have done a redesign on our B&E body torsion bar to a 20 degree offset. We have sold hundreds of these bars with only a handful of customers claiming a ride height issue and of those issues they were all with big block B&E body cars. But with about half of those customers it was a clocking issue upon installation and we were able to work with them on correcting the issue. The main reason that we did the redesign was that it was time to re-order from the forge and it was the perfect time to make the change and allow for more clocking/ride height adjustment.

If there is anything that I can help you with please let me know and I will try to work with you.

Thanks
James
Click to expand...

James, I appreciate the zealous feedback. However, this thread is to try to document those who may have had ride height problems using 1.03 bars on A bodies and PST zero offset bars.
 
I agree, if there is an issue with our A Body Torsion bars PST & I would like to be aware of the situation. We take issues with our products very seriously and make an effort to supply quality parts for these vintage Mopars. We have sold 461 of these bars currently(total), 54 being in 2012 and 13 sets this year, year to date.

Thanks
James
 
Since we are building a car with a few engineers in the house, (slows things down!), I will share our experience with the PST 1.03's for you Peter. In our application, (inline 6 with an aluminum alloy head, no installed fluids, or hood, we had to set the adjustment screws ALL THE WAY IN to stay about 3 mm to 4.1 mm, (1/8" to 3/16"), off the LCA bump stops. If we were going for the slammed, bagged look this might have been OK but to not have ANY adjustment left AT ALL for a car at full weight with fluids or settled bars resulted in the 1.03's to be completely unacceptable for our application.

We ended up calling Dick at Firm Feel for the correct 1.06 torsion bars with approximately 15 degrees of offset.

While I'm sure some folks feel OK living with a zero offset bar and a buried adjustment setting we do not.

PST: Fix the offset issue, do a little PPAP, and you should have a product that works.

I would LOVE to hear from successful 1.03 PST users myself and see a picture of their adjustment screws.
 
superdve said:
Since we are building a car with a few engineers in the house, (slows things down!), I will share our experience with the PST 1.03's for you Peter. In our application, (inline 6 with an aluminum alloy head, no installed fluids, or hood, we had to set the adjustment screws ALL THE WAY IN to stay about 3 mm to 4.1 mm, (1/8" to 3/16"), off the LCA bump stops. If we were going for the slammed, bagged look this might have been OK but to not have ANY adjustment left AT ALL for a car at full weight with fluids or settled bars resulted in the 1.03's to be completely unacceptable for our application.

We ended up calling Dick at Firm Feel for the correct 1.06 torsion bars with approximately 15 degrees of offset.

While I'm sure some folks feel OK living with a zero offset bar and a buried adjustment setting we do not.

PST: Fix the offset issue, do a little PPAP, and you should have a product that works.

I would LOVE to hear from successful 1.03 PST users myself and see a picture of their adjustment screws.
Click to expand...


Well I would like to make it known so that there is no confusion here. The issue that GMachineDartGT and superdve are having is one in the same "issue". The torsion bars in question were purchased on our website and billed to GMachineDartGT and shipped to superdve for the project car that they are working on together. I believe this post came about because of the issue that superdve had installing our bars. Superdve then wanted to return them for refund. We said that we would take back the bars as long as they were in resalable condition. Unfortunately the bars came back with nicks in them and were deemed unsalable. When this was explained to superdve, his repsonse was he would spread his displeasure among the forums, which he is allowed to do to freely.

As I have said in previous posts we have sold a tremendous amount of these bars over the years. (54 sets last year alone and 13 so far this year)

Thanks
James
 
PST said:
As I have said in previous posts we have sold a tremendous amount of these bars over the years. (54 sets last year alone and 13 so far this year)

Thanks
James
Click to expand...

Is there any chance you will redesign these like the B/E Body ones with like a 20 degree offset? Cause I would hate to dump the money into them and they dont work properly or have no adjustment if I switch tires and need more hieght
 
74DartSwinger360 said:
Is there any chance you will redesign these like the B/E Body ones with like a 20 degree offset? Cause I would hate to dump the money into them and they dont work properly or have no adjustment if I switch tires and need more hieght
Click to expand...

We did not re-design the A body bars because we had had no issue with the A body bar. If there is and was an issue with these bars we would have experienced a high issue/return rate which we have not had. As seen in the sales of the bars of over 400 hundred sets.

Thanks
James
 
PST said:
We did not re-design the A body bars because we had had no issue with the A body bar. If there is and was an issue with these bars we would have experienced a high issue/return rate which we have not had. As seen in the sales of the bars of over 400 hundred sets.

Thanks
James
Click to expand...
So if I bought some and didnt like how they worked or didnt have the adjustability. I could return them for a refund?

I just wonder why not just make the bars with the offset? If the factory had it it was there for a reason. Am I wrong?
 
GMachineDartGT said:
I want to hear FIRST hand who has had issues with the PST 1.03 torsion bars. These bars are not clocked leaving zero preload. This results with low ride height and no adjustment left on the adjustment bolts.

Please don't get off track here, I need some evidence from people who have had this issue.
Click to expand...

This is the last time I will reiterate the initial post. The intention here was to find out if others experienced the same problem we did, no more no less. I did not ask PST to come on here to divulge any personal information about a transaction which is very unprofessional. If we were the only ones with any issue so be it, however, I doubt it.
 
74DartSwinger360 said:
So if I bought some and didnt like how they worked or didnt have the adjustability. I could return them for a refund?

I just wonder why not just make the bars with the offset? If the factory had it it was there for a reason. Am I wrong?
Click to expand...

We have the same return policy on all of our items. Items can be returned as long as they are in resalable condition. The bars can't be all nicked up, so if install them be sure to wrapped them in something such as masking tape to reduce the chance of damage upon install.

As a bars diameter increase the less clocking or offset it will need. Now you may ask than why did we re-clock the b/e bars. We did that because the b/e bar is a longer bar. So even though they are the same diameter as the A bar they a longer so they twist more so they need the off set for pre-load. Where the A body bar is shorter and is stiffer that the b/e bar at zero clocking.

Thanks
James
 
I'd say these ARE defective with no offset. This is based upon our experience but let's let the OTHER 400+? ACTUAL? 1.03" users report how their cars sit with zero offset 1.03" bars and let's ask how much adjustment they have left. For us they flat out didn't work, I'd call that defective or not as good as other brands but the rest of you can decide for yourselves. Our 71' Scamp is an Arizona car that has never been wrecked or rusted so we feel pretty confident it's good example to use as reference.

FWIW, One of our team thought we should try and clock them one hex, (60 degrees), which flat out wouldn't work. We scratched ours in the process so we were denied a refund. I call it out here since PST should be doing the right thing and swap our bars for a corrected design with some sort of offset. But no, they will keep saying the same thing, "We've sold so many of these bars and everyone is happy because they don't know any better." My suggestion is to make your OWN decisions once a few others with ACTUAL installation and road time experience chime in. If you are happy with no adjustment and it works for you then buy the 1.03's.

Once again, We now have Firm Feel's 1.06" bars and they work perfectly.

PST got our $200+shipping+plus the extra labor and they just won't get another nickel from anybody we know because they cannot do the right thing here. Lesson learned. Hmmm, watch now they wont fix the design because that would admit that some of us are right. Even partial credit might have kept us quiet but in reality the members here are better off knowing our issue and what we did to fix it.
 
GMachineDartGT said:
I did not ask PST to come on here to divulge any personal information about a transaction which is very unprofessional. If we were the only ones with any issue so be it, however, I doubt it.
Click to expand...

This is why I also brought it up. We wouldn't have scratched them if they worked perfectly as we wouldn't have tried to swap them side to side, clock them 1 hex, or anything else. When the car is sitting slammed on the bump stops with no front clip or fluids and you are out of time you make these bad decisions I suppose. For the $100 cost delta we've spent far too much time talking about PST's problem. I'm not going to do their engineering for them now too.
 
I have PST 1.03's and they work GREAT! Still doing engine building and full suspension modification (mostly hotchkis and magnum force stuff) but the install of the 1.03's into my stock suspension 70' slant six A-body was fine and I still have SOME (not a ton but enough) adjustment left. When you install suspension components you do it in a process so everything is designed to work with eachother. If I put a cast iron RB motor in my car, I would expect to have to go to a stiffer torsion bar as adjustment alone wouldn't correct the problem. No adjustment is fine if you order the proper parts for your application. Keep in mind my A-body is a slant six car (for now) so is lighter in the front than most V8's but here's a pic with the 1.03 bar...as you can see it has great stance in my opinion (that is a 205/60/15 tire in the front)...I love my PST bars and I'm sure other's love their Firm Feels, no biggie every product is different and will fit varying customer needs. Oh, and I bought mine unused on eBay for cheap:cheers:
 

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dusterdan said:
I have PST 1.03's and they work GREAT! Still doing engine building and full suspension modification (mostly hotchkis and magnum force stuff) but the install of the 1.03's into my stock suspension 70' slant six A-body was fine and I still have SOME (not a ton but enough) adjustment left. When you install suspension components you do it in a process so everything is designed to work with eachother. If I put a cast iron RB motor in my car, I would expect to have to go to a stiffer torsion bar as adjustment alone wouldn't correct the problem. No adjustment is fine if you order the proper parts for your application. Keep in mind my A-body is a slant six car (for now) so is lighter in the front than most V8's but here's a pic with the 1.03 bar...as you can see it has great stance in my opinion (that is a 205/60/15 tire in the front)...I love my PST bars and I'm sure other's love their Firm Feels, no biggie every product is different and will fit varying customer needs. Oh, and I bought mine unused on eBay for cheap:cheers:
Click to expand...

Dan, wouldn't you agree that most street/strip guys use a 1" and under bar even for their big blocks? You must be able to pre load the bars for proper height. Having little to no preload adjustment put us in a bad spot and if Ma Mopar intended the springs to work this way there would have been specific bars for every trim and option group and no adjusters to save cost. FWIW, I won't get a chance to corner weigh our Scamp until its back from paint but we were buried on the adjusters with no front clip!
 
I've got the same bars installed 10-2011 in my 318 automatic 68 fastback. I to could not achieve adequate ride height. I was able to get some longer adjuster bolts and achieve proper height, with about only 1/8" of adjuster length to spare. Now that the bars have settled and been readjusted there is no adjustment left. I have contemplated cutting loose the torsion bar anchor and repositioning.

When I purchased the bars there was no warning on the on the website about not being able to reachieve proper ride height, atleast not that I saw. Numerous emails to there customer support went unanswered, and phone calls were either not picked up at 3pm or I was put on hold until I gave up. Needless to say these were the last product I have bought from them.

All I can say is if you plan on purchasing it's good to know what your getting into.
 
MrCuda68 said:
I've got the same bars installed 10-2011 in my 318 automatic 68 fastback. I to could not achieve adequate ride height. I was able to get some longer adjuster bolts and achieve proper height, with about only 1/8" of adjuster length to spare. Now that the bars have settled and been readjusted there is no adjustment left. I have contemplated cutting loose the torsion bar anchor and repositioning.

When I purchased the bars there was no warning on the on the website about not being able to reachieve proper ride height, atleast not that I saw. Numerous emails to there customer support went unanswered, and phone calls were either not picked up at 3pm or I was put on hold until I gave up. Needless to say these were the last product I have bought from them.

All I can say is if you plan on purchasing it's good to know what your getting into.
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MrCuda68,

If you don't mind me asking, can you possibly provide us with some photos of your cars current stance as well as the placement of the torsion bar adjuster bolts? Also where did you get the longer adjuster bolts from( what year car). I am more that willing to talk about the issue that Gmachinedartgt is claiming to have and to try to work and determine if there is an issue. As we do not hide behind the fact that we have sold 400+ of these bars.

Thanks
James
 
Problem with buried adjustment also is the arm with the divot that rotates inside the control arm when its maxed out on adjustment is sticking way out of the control arm and can in some cases get hung up on the frame rail. I've seen this happen with a Big Block and .810 bars.
 
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