isnt he a member here?
- Thread starter abodyjoe
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Sounds very familiar. I think the spelling was not the same.
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No luck in the search bar?
Wracks71.
That article is from 2018 though. Just another article that suggests you need a coil over swap to have a good handling Mopar.
The shoot out article that was mentioned is here
2013 Muscle Car of the Year - Popular Hot Rodding Magazine
and ironically if you look at the AutoX times, you’ll see that the Hotchkis taxi, a 4 door ‘70 Satellite with torsion bars and leaf springs, put down faster lap times than wracks71’s fully RMS suspended ‘71 Duster
That article is from 2018 though. Just another article that suggests you need a coil over swap to have a good handling Mopar.
The shoot out article that was mentioned is here
2013 Muscle Car of the Year - Popular Hot Rodding Magazine
and ironically if you look at the AutoX times, you’ll see that the Hotchkis taxi, a 4 door ‘70 Satellite with torsion bars and leaf springs, put down faster lap times than wracks71’s fully RMS suspended ‘71 Duster
mopowers
Well-Known Member
Very cool Duster!
DionR
Well-Known Member
Yep, that’s him. Last active Aug 13,2017.
Seems like he was trying really hard to be competitive in the Optima series. I think that is why he went to the full RMS suspension, because some of those guys said he would never compete using a Mopar on stock suspension because he couldn’t get the rear roll center low enough? Something like that, I would have to go digging. Seems like he posted his reasons on here when he made the swap.
Really hope he didn’t grow disillusioned with the Duster and Mopars in general and jump ship to a Camaro or something.
He was at Moparty a year or two ago with his Duster. Think he just got tired of FABO, which I can understand.
He said things like "every fast car on the track in the country is running some sort of coilover aftermarket suspension,chevy,ford,or mopar.", which wasn't even true at the time he said it because the Hotchkis Taxi had lapped the same track faster than he did at that point, it was in the article I posted above. So there were Mopars at the time that were faster than his, running torsion bars and leafs. Although he liked to say there were no mopars with torsion bars at the events he was running, which seems kinda silly. So he showed up to a few events and was the only Mopar. So what? The Hotchkis Challenger and Taxi were going to events at the time, just not where he was.
Like all the coil-over boosting articles lots of claims are made and not backed up. "The CG is lower". Is it? Because the heaviest part of the coil over system is the coil overs, and they're much higher on the car than the heavy torsion bars, and I've never seen anyone actually do the math on the CG. Lots of claims, no evidence. "It saves a ton of weight". Well, no, not really. Not unless you compare a power steering torsion bar car with a manual rack coil-over car. And honestly most of that is just the massively heavy mopar power steering box. You save more weight going from an OE power steering box to an OE manual steering box than you do going from OE manual steering to a manual rack w/ coil-overs. I've done that math.
He even said at one point that he had more issues setting up the 4 link than the front end. Which makes sense, because if you ask actual road racers what they want for rear suspension a triangulated 4 link isn't it.
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replicaracer43
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I recall him bragging about how great his duster handled, then getting absolutely destroyed by a torsion bar car at some event. Dont recall the details
Yup, it’s in the article I posted. He got wiped out by the Hotchkis Taxi in every event.
Now granted, the Taxi was being driven by Kevin Wesley. But it was also a big block, power steering, FOUR DOOR, B-body. So, probably giving up 500 lbs in the weight department and still a full second faster on the autoX track than the RMS Duster. Clearly there was a power difference with the Taxi being much faster on the drag strip as well. But typically autoX favors the smaller, lighter car over sheer horsepower, and a 4 door Satellite is a big car on an autoX course.
And the Taxi ran the second quickest autoX, behind only Danny Pop's '72 'Vette, which has won the Optima challenge more than once. And it beat out some pretty fancy, high dollar suspensions on the other contenders as well, while giving up weight and horsepower to most of them.
replicaracer43
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A full SECOND slower in the auto X is MASSIVELY slower, not even in the same universe.
mopowers
Well-Known Member
How much of that could be the driver vs. the car?
It's really hard to say honestly. The fastest car in the autoX was Danny Popp's '72 Corvette which turned a 47.939. The Taxi driven by Wesley turned a 48.473. The slowest car on the autoX was a 53.57, which was a fully RideTech suspension equipped '69 Camaro (lots of coin to be that slow!). The drag race winner, an '81 Pontiac TransAm with RideTech coil overs and a 4 link and 1,000 hp turned a 49.081 on the autoX while very clearly being set up for drag racing. That kind of horsepower is usually NOT an advantage on the autoX, that guy has to know how to drive.
The time gap on an autoX of 5+ seconds for the whole field is A LOT. Clearly some of those cars are not set up for autoX, or their drivers aren't used to doing it, or both. But given the field that makes sense. Danny Popp has won the Optima Ultimate street car challenge twice in his newer Z06 Corvette, so clearly he knows how to set up a car and drive on on road tracks and autoX's. Kevin Wesley drove the Green Brick and has a lot of autoX experience. But the half a second between Danny and Kevin probably has a lot to do with just the size and weight difference between the '72 Corvette and a '70 4 door Satellite, there's a lot of just plain old physics there.
Between a small block '71 Duster and a big block '70 4 door Satellite, the Duster clearly should have the size and weight advantage. Like probably close to 500 lbs lighter. The Satellite has the power advantage though, if you look at the engine builds. So how much is driver? How much is car set up? How much is just tire choice?
Man I don't know. It could literally ALL be driver skill, Kevin Wesley has proven he can drive. But Wracks allegedly has a decent amount of autoX seat time too. Bottom line for me is that it's hard to argue you have the better car if you're lighter and smaller and, on an autoX course, are still getting beat by a full second.
To me the whole thing makes sense. There's nothing inherently wrong with coil over conversions, they have their advantages and the RMS conversion is a well thought out piece. But there's nothing wrong with a properly set up torsion bar car either, and it has its advantages too. For even the above average driver I don't think there should be much difference in autoX times if you had the same car set up properly with either a torsion bar based or a coil over conversion suspension. It used to be that the parts to properly tune a torsion bar suspension weren't out there vs a coilover set up. But that' just not true anymore, you can get everything you need to tune your torsion bar suspension to do everything a coil over conversion can do except have a rack and additional header clearance. So to me it's just preference. You don't NEED a coil over conversion to have a good handling Mopar, and you just can't slap coil overs on there and expect to be fast, they're not magic. You have to do the tuning and set up for those too! I think if you spend the time setting up and tuning a torsion bar suspension you can be just as fast.
My heartburn is over articles like the one that started this thread on Wrack71's car. More specifically, things like this statement "Although the car was a nice cruiser, Eric decided he wanted improve the handling to hang with the Pro-touring cars he saw." Well, guess what? You don't need a fully RMS converted car to do that. Evidence provided by that really nice pro-touring Hotchkis Taxi that ran faster in every event with torsion bars and leaf springs. If you want to fully convert your Mopar to RMS, well, awesome, it's your car. But you can handle JUST AS WELL with a properly set up torsion bar suspension.
DionR
Well-Known Member
Yep, I can understand that, too.
Funny, I ended up reading that thread today between other activities.
abodyjoe
Well-Known Member
a **** ton for sure.
when i had my yellow dart with full RMS suspension i had a guy trying to get me to the track to run with him.. i knew what he wanted to do. he wanted to take someone who never even set foot on a track with turns in it, box stock 74 360 with 2.94 gears and put it up against his 408 powered car that is set up for and sees quite a bit of track time so he could go out and tell everyone look how slow that RMS equipped car is compared to my torsion bar car.. video isn't always all telling.
DionR
Well-Known Member
But to be clear, Wracks wasn't a stranger to turns. In the article you posted it said he used to autocross a Celica before he got the Duster, so he wasn't new to auto-x. Not saying experience equals skill, but it wasn't the reason he wasn't competitive with the Taxi that year.
And I found a post where he commented that he took first in Carlisle auto-x in 2015 here. Guessing he isn't without some kind of skills based on that.
Sounds like he brought the wrong tire, too. The article says he was running 300 treadwear tires, bet the rest of the crowd was on 200 treadwear tires. No idea if that makes up a second on the Taxi, though. Kind of seems like the Duster should have had the Taxi at a disadvantage and the tires only equalized the two, but doesn't appear to have ended that way.
As to the drivers, probably fair to acknowledge that Kevin Wesley can drive.
DionR
Well-Known Member
I think there is a perception that all stock suspensions are inferior to a coil over. And I think the major reason for this perception is that most gear heads in the world are Chevy people and most of them love themselves a Camaro.
The reality is, for a Camaro, they really do need an improves suspension. I remember reading a blog years ago where a guy was building a Sunoco tribute car (or something like that) and he went into great depth on the design flaws of the front suspension. Something about the location of the spring on the LCA forcing you to run huge spring rates to get a decent wheel rate causing other problems you couldn't avoid. So, for a Camaro or any other similar GM products (maybe all of them?) it makes sense that to make one handle better you need an aftermarket suspension.
The problem is that a fair number of those same Chevy people are also writers and video personalities and so the "everything old must be replaced" mantra is spread far and wide.
As an example, let me hold up the creator and founder of the whole pro-touring movement (per the magazines), Mark Stielow. What number is he on now for Camaro builds, 75? He fought the poor suspension design of the Camaro for years with custom one off parts and such. Since these cars are the absolute pinnacle of the whole movement, what's a guy to think other than "if Mark has to throw out the entire front suspension, I guess I do to". Doesn't matter if it is a Ford or a Mopar, Mark has coil overs on his Camaro so they must be better.
Not saying I have anything against Mark, he built some cool cars. Love his focus on make it better and evolve the build. Just saying I think his builds have influenced the idea that old is bad, aftermarket is good.
On a side note, I love that the first year (I think) the Green Brick ran in the One Lap, it was against a Stielow Camaro. As I recall, it was a tight race and the victory by the Valiant might have been influenced by a fuel fire on the Camaro. Really wasn't much to the Valiant, but the Camaro wasn't able to run away from it either.
DionR
Well-Known Member
Mark Stielow Built 12 Camaros So You Don’t Have To
"Mark was a member of his college Formula SAE team at Missouri University of Science and Technology. His knowledge of suspensions taught him enough to know that the first-generation Camaro's factory suspension geometry is "all jacked up." His first Camaro used tall spindles and fabricated upper control arms, and his aforementioned bumperless 1967 used a mix of off-the-shelf and custom parts with pie-cut control arms and Corvette spindles in an attempt to solve the first-generation Camaro's inherently poor suspension geometry. Mark admits the car still had bumpsteer. When he built his next Camaro with exotic billet chromoly spindles, there were still compromises. Since then, the market for products that improve handling on 1960s and 1970s muscle has boomed and there are a number of engineered solutions that greatly improve the factory geometry. Take advantage of it."
Interesting, this article about the Camaro Mark built for the One Lap even takes some pokes at Mopar Action.
The Story of “Tri-Tip,” the 1969 Camaro That Helped Launch Pro Touring
I think what they miss is the level of equipment that the two cars had. The Camaro was running a high zoot smallblock with EFI, 6 speed manual, 17" wheels and ZR1 brakes. The Valiant had a crate 360, 4 speed (OD?), 15" wheels, 11.75" brake upgrade and a stock TB suspension with some tweaks. Then they added more HP to the Camaro for the following year and the last year even brought an IMSA champ to drive the car.
Right, and while I agree that's kind of shady and doesn't really prove anything as far as the ultimate capabilities of the RMS system it does point out some of the shortcomings too. People think they can just write a check and slap on the RMS suspension and have the best handling Mopar ever. It's just not true. Can you tune and dial in the RMS and have a very good handling Mopar? Absolutely. Might the "out of the box" set up be better than you might achieve just slapping random replacement parts on the torsion bar suspension? Yep, it probably is.
But it's not some magic suspension that fixes everything and doesn't have it's own shortcomings. And there's a "magazine racing" component to it as well, how many people just write a check and pay a shop to install an RMS, then say they have the best handling Mopar when all they do is putt around? So quite frankly I also understand the desire to make a car like that look stupid on the track, even if in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really "prove" anything as far as the actual capabilities of the suspension.
And honestly, I think that's where Wracks got himself in trouble. He bought the fanciest stuff he could get at the time and then said stuff like "all the fastest cars in the country have coil overs", which didn't go well for him when he started losing to torsion bar cars.
Yes. People see the worn out, beat down suspension on their project car and then look at the shiny, expensive coil over systems and are fooled into thinking that's the best thing to do. Just bolt on all those fancy expensive parts and it has to be the best right? But pretty much all of the coil over conversions for Mopars are just MII based suspension. And when people look at them they see this...
But what they don't see is this, which is just stock MII suspension all those fancy parts are based on. Looks the same as the beat down, worn out stuff on everyone's project car.
And very few people actually consider the suspension geometry or chassis loading when they do that. Heck even @HemiDenny said something to the effect that very few of his customers even ask about things like that.
And yeah, it does matter what car you're starting with. I'm not an expert on GM suspension, but the motion ratio's and spring rates that you see on Camaro's obviously indicates some pretty big challenges with the OE design. Which is not to say the Mopar torsion bar suspension doesn't have it's own challenges.
Yeah exactly. Stielow is a GM engineer and his Camaro was on an entire different level than the Green Brick. By today's standards the Green Brick is half a step over a stock rebuild. Torsion bars are too small, alignment is very conservative, brakes are a decent improvement over stock but no where near some of the big disks available now (although later versions of the Brick got Viper calipers), tires were pretty small although a decent compound. And yeah, the original version didn't have that much power either, although again that was upgraded later.
And sure, some of that is that Kevin Wesley is a really talented driver. But it's also a reflection of the basic torsion bar suspension being a better starting point than most people want to give it credit for.
abodyjoe
Well-Known Member
in reality it doesn't show any short comings. nothing out of the box is perfect for any desired use. if someone thinks that it just proves how stupid they are. same as someone who thinks they sre gonna drop a boatload of coin on larger bars, sway bars, tube control arms thinking they are going out and it will be perfect without tuning fot their style of driving and their specific car. again it just shows how stupid they are more then any short comings of a system.
But people DO think that, I've had discussions with more than a few people on this board and most of them just regurgitate the marketing claims. Coil overs are the best!!!
And what does the advertising say? Straight from RMS-
"Our complete suspension systems do more than save weight and add clearance. They're
designed with precise geometry for optimum control, whether you're on the road course,
cruising along winding country roads, or driving along pothole-covered city streets."
and
" Full Features -
- - Superior geometry throughout the travel range.
- - 5.5" total travel.
- - Rigid parts for excellent control and feel.
- - RideTech monotube Single Adjustable Coil-Overs offer superior ride quality and handling along with the RideTech Exclusive Million-Mile Warranty."
And for RMS especially that's kinda interesting. Reason being is that Bill Reilly wrote the article about how the FMJ spindles aren't a problem like Ehrenburg said earlier in his disk o tech article. And in Bill's article he includes the suspension geometry plots for both factory disk spindles and FMJ spindles on an A-body. Which means he knows exactly how to do it and what the factory, and modified factory geometry can show for at least a couple of set ups.
Swapping Disc-Brake Spindles - Mopar Muscle Magazine
And then he doesn't publish the exact same info for his own suspension? Despite claiming it's "superior" in every way and throughout the range of travel? If it's true, why not publish that information and PROVE it?
Well, I'll go out on a limb and say why. Because it's not all that dramatically different from what you can achieve with the torsion bar suspension. None of the suspension mounting points are moved. The UCA's are basically the same as any of the tubular Mopar UCA's. The UCA's and LCA's remain basically parallel to each other, which means the spindle height isn't that different either (and that can be adjusted anyway). The suspension travel is roughly the same as factory (~5.5"). The stuff that's mostly the same is what controls the roll center, so that won't be all that different. And forget the motion ratio, the torsion bar system is 1:1 and that's as good as it gets, no coil over conversion system can touch it (it's one of the torsion bar systems main advantages, its VERY efficient).
So yeah, I'd be willing to bet those suspension geometry plots aren't all that different from a torsion bar system on a car that uses tubular UCA's and has been lowered a bit. Certainly there's no slam dunk there for sure, because if there was I can guarantee someone would have published the suspension plots by now as part of their advertising for their coil over conversion. You know that RMS did the analysis and the plots for sure, Bill's a smart guy and I know he put real work into designing that suspension so it would work. It wouldn't be hard to slap that stuff together and make the geometry WORSE, and he knows that.
There's no doubt some advantages, and no doubt some disadvantages too. It's how all suspension works. If you just need to have a rack and pinion, knock yourself out. But a rack and pinion and header clearance doesn't mean "superior" handling.
abodyjoe
Well-Known Member
he says nothing that isn't true. you want to see plots then ask him.. maybe he will show them to you. his page doesn't say that you can't have good control with torsion bars anywhere. define superior. depending what you start with, yes you can bolt the system in (you buy it as a complete system), align it and bang you have a car that handles far superior then it did before. you want to spend 4k+ and shop all over the place for the proper parts for a torsion bar set ups then go for it. to me there is no way all that steering linkage will ever feel like a rack driving down the road.. like i said if you think anything is bolt in and perfect for any intended usage you can dream up you are just an idiot. and from what i've seen posted on various forums and facebook pages there is no shortage of idiots in this hobby..
abodyjoe
Well-Known Member
aka magnumforce.
DionR
Well-Known Member
Sounds like Wracks is a friend of Bill's and helped him develop some of his stuff, based on the article. Might add to his desire to trumpet the product some.
DionR
Well-Known Member
Based on a recent article, the Green Brick has been in storage for 15 years but is slated to get a 6.4 in the near future.
Lol. There's nothing "superior" about the geometry, it's just marketing BS. Maybe it's not a lie, but it's not really true either. And really if there was anything clearly superior about the geometry those plots would be plastered all over the RMS website. Or even here! Certainly there's enough coil over supporters here that they'd have been posted if they were so great. The truth is more like splitting hairs, trade-offs and compromises. But splitting hairs doesn't sell coil over conversions.
And no one really talks about how those coil over systems load the chassis in a completely different way than it was designed to carry the suspension loads, because that affects handling too. It probably has a bigger effect than any difference in the geometry if it's not addressed.
As for the rack and pinion, it still amazes me that people are so bothered by the small on center spot you get with a properly adjusted worm and ball steering box and properly maintained steering components. A rack and pinion will not make you lap any faster, it's not a handling improvement. Maybe it's just because I grew up driving classic cars, but I don't understand at all why people are so enamored with the rack and pinion set up. I've never jumped in a newer car and been like "wow, rack and pinion steering!". Or maybe there's just that many people that don't know how to properly adjust and maintain a worm and ball steering system?
I'm pretty tired of hearing the "shop all over the place" excuse too. You can't handle ordering from 3 different places? If the whole suspension doesn't come in one box it's too hard to manage? I could order from @BergmanAutoCraft, @DoctorDiff, and Summit Racing and replace and upgrade every single component in the torsion bar suspension including all the brakes and have it be on par or better than the best you can get from RMS. Take you 10 minutes to order everything you need, tops.
Best handling Mopars are still running torsion bars
’70 Challenger On Factory-Style Suspension is an Autocross Warrior
Eh. I'd like to be excited by the prospect of seeing the Green Brick revamped again, but if Ehrenberg is still involved I doubt it will be half as interesting as some of the builds here on FABO.
abodyjoe
Well-Known Member
oh brother...lol. it always cracks me up how triggered you get when this subject comes up and the lengthy hate spewed posts against the systems you post.. i think everyone gets it. you hate those systems. ok.. but many like them. i guess thats something you'll need to accept one day.
yes many people would like to one stop shop instead of having to go different places. i don't see an issue with that. nothing that you posted about what is posted on the RMS site is a lie. call it whatever you want but it isn't a lie. like i said if you are so curious about plots or numbers then ask bill one day.. maybe he will show you. maybe not, i don't know. what i do know is crying about it on a web site won't get you the answer...
i don't care how new a steering box system is, i don't care how prefect the box is adjusted. no way will it feel like a rack. just too many moving parts. me, i prefer the feel of a rack. its what i like.. i'm not telling you that you have to like it. there is a different feel. that just can't be argued. for me i don't care about lap times. its about how it feels on the street driving how i want to drive.
and yet again if anyone thinks you can just bolt anything in and it be perfect for their intended use right out of the box without some tweaking to make it work for them then they are just an idiot.
yes many people would like to one stop shop instead of having to go different places. i don't see an issue with that. nothing that you posted about what is posted on the RMS site is a lie. call it whatever you want but it isn't a lie. like i said if you are so curious about plots or numbers then ask bill one day.. maybe he will show you. maybe not, i don't know. what i do know is crying about it on a web site won't get you the answer...
i don't care how new a steering box system is, i don't care how prefect the box is adjusted. no way will it feel like a rack. just too many moving parts. me, i prefer the feel of a rack. its what i like.. i'm not telling you that you have to like it. there is a different feel. that just can't be argued. for me i don't care about lap times. its about how it feels on the street driving how i want to drive.
and yet again if anyone thinks you can just bolt anything in and it be perfect for their intended use right out of the box without some tweaking to make it work for them then they are just an idiot.
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