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Plymouth duster rear suspension questions
- Thread starter Bryan bravo
- Start date
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MopaR&D
Nerd Member
Just my $.02, I put Hotchkis rear leaves on my Duster but I was disappointed at how soft they are, I was expecting them to be quite a bit firmer. I have 275/40-18 Continentals on the rear (255-wide up front) and it's almost impossible to get the rear to come loose in a turn and the car still wants to understeer even with my Hellwig adjustable rear sway bar on the stiffest setting, I can feel the back end of the car leaning more than the front in hard cornering. That's track day stuff though, can't really notice it in spirited street driving it just sticks like glue all the time lol. 1.14" torsion bars up front btw which is part of the issue, I put those in and now I kinda need to rework everything else to make the handling balanced again.
They may be a good match for 1.03" t-bars though. My car was decently balanced when I still had the 1.0" t-bars with the Hotchkis springs but it had too much body roll when I really pushed it at the track with the grippy wide modern tires.
They may be a good match for 1.03" t-bars though. My car was decently balanced when I still had the 1.0" t-bars with the Hotchkis springs but it had too much body roll when I really pushed it at the track with the grippy wide modern tires.
Funny you mention the understeer problem. I wasn't running a rear bar at all and would have some pretty bad understeer when auto crossing. I originally contributed it to having a smaller tire in the front, 235/40. I'm no expert on chassis setup, but read a rear bar could help understeer, or make the *** end loose. I took my chances and bought the Hotchkis rear bar. It was really the only piece left of the Hotchkis package I was lacking. Just the past weekend was my first auto cross with the new bar. I had it set to the middle hole. The car was flatter, but still pushed in the tighter high speed turns. At lunch break I moved it to the tightest setting. That was a big improvement. It still pushes a little, but it's much better. I can also make the *** end get loose easier now, but I'd rather have control over that than constantly pushing in the turns. I do run a 1.08 t-bar and maybe that's why the rear bar helped more than yours.
MopaR&D
Nerd Member
Oh the rear sway bar definitely helped, made a huge improvement when I first put it in. But now the extra stiff 1.14" bars up front along with the beefy Hellwig front sway bar make the front end so flat in corners that last time I took it to the track it understeered worse than with the old 1.00" bars (yes I played with tire pressures but to no avail). I recently had the front end re-aligned for more camber (went from ~-0.4 to -2.0 degrees) which will hopefully increase cornering grip on the front end and tone down the understeer. But the rear suspension still needs to be firmer for sure. I might take the Hotchkis spring packs to a local truck leaf spring shop and see about having another leaf added in the appropriate way so they don't become overly stiff or raise the back end of the car too much.
It cracks me up people are always "Be careful with a rear sway bar it'll make it oversteer!" Yeah maybe with 195mm-wide Radial T/As on the back but these cars are sooo understeer-oriented from the factory it's really not that risky at all. I'd argue these cars pretty much need it with any decent modern tires. I also agree 100% I'd rather have control over making the rear come loose if I want to than just plow straight through every turn.
I also have a 3.55 gear set (car currently has 2.94s) and clutch rebuild kit for my worn Sure-Grip unit I need to install, probably will do that before messing with the leaf springs as that will make it behave a bit differently in the corners. At least from my experience messing with those tuning settings in racing simulator video games lol.
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