School me: 63-66 Dart vs 67-72 Dart suspension

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justthatguy

justthatguy

Josh(69 Valiant)
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So after years of trying to figure out exactly what the hell to do with the 65 Dart GT my grandfather bought some time ago, it was brought to my attention that I already had an A body in order to start the pro touring A body I always wanted to do. Regardless of whatever else this may entail(such as a 360 swap, some manner of manual transmission for a car not equipped as such), I am trying to find some resources about suspensions, specifically, I want to go with the QA1 stuff. Their front suspensions claim to work with early A bodies, but the rears do not. The car will get disc brakes and big ones at that, I know there's less room in the wells than a newer a body. They require an 8 3/4 and as far as I know that can be swapped into any A body but is there something else I don't know about? I haven't actually gotten under the car yet to see what I have, I just want to see if this is even a project worth pursuing. So I guess my question is, what are the major differences in early to late A body suspensions?
 
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P-S-T should have everything you need. I have 2 65 Darts and just finished putting a 318 in and upgraded all brakes and suspension. Firm Feel and Schumacher are very helpful as well.
 
Let me know if your have any questions on our product lines. If anything you may want to consider upgrading to the 73 and later larger ball joint style. You can do that when you do the disc brake swap and can upgrade to tubular upper control arms.

Thanks
James
 
I'm concerned at the moment with the removal of the leaf springs to a 4 link at least, with something to laterally locate the rear.
 
I'm thinking that the car is not as wide as the later generation. I guess I would have to take some out of whatever suspension kit I put in it
 
The suspensions are all the same as far as the parts are concerned. There are variations that keeping their parts together makes things easier. I would never go to a 4 link rear suspension. The A body is a sweet handling package if you get the right parts. Call Firm Feel, they actually road race. There have also been a few very interesting threads here as well.
 
The groups are loosely 64-72 and 73 up. Early A's are narrower so the K frame and sway bars are shorter. 67 is special with a single shear idler arm like the 64-66 A Bodies. 68-72 uses flat motor mounts while 73 up uses captured round motor mounts. 73 up sway bar threads through the K frame and the lower control arms with sway bar tabs are different because of this. 73 also has larger upper control arm ball joints.
 
As far as I can tell there is no real way to easily laterally locate a leaf sprung rear axle, like you can do with a 4 link(6 in the qa1's case). This backs up driving impressions of my first car, which was a 69 Valiant. I could actually feel the tail of it shift slightly under cornering. The front suspension on any A body is already designed well so that's not as much of a concern as the rear.

Looks like it's roughly a 2 inch difference in rear axle width. That doesn't seem like it would be too much of a concern.
 
Comments in the quote
justthatguy said:
As far as I can tell there is no real way to easily laterally locate a leaf sprung rear axle, like you can do with a 4 link(6 in the qa1's case). This backs up driving impressions of my first car, which was a 69 Valiant. I could actually feel the tail of it shift slightly under cornering. The front suspension on any A body is already designed well so that's not as much of a concern as the rear.
Before you blame the suspension for that, might it have been the tires?
When the rear ride height is lowered, the springs are fairly flat, and on the street you will be hard-pressed to feel anything but sidewall flex, or possibly a little loosness in the rearmost shackle bushings......IMO.
Again, on the street this is no biggie.........IMO
Looks like it's roughly a 2 inch difference in rear axle width. That doesn't seem like it would be too much of a concern.
Only in so much as to where the U-bolts need to be, as in not on the bearing housing. Of course the closer together you make the springs, the harder it will be to control side-sway.
I think somebody should cut their early-A car right up the center and put about 4 or 5 inches in there,lol. Yeah, E-body width seems about right!
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I know this might not apply to you, but;
I occasionally run 325/50-15s BFG-DRs in the stock 68 Barracuda tubs, with nearly flat rear springs, and with the "3/4" inch offset hanger kits. You cannot get a pinkie between the sidewalls and the tubs. But there is enough room that I can zoom around 90* corners,in the city,at about 30 mph, with quite a bit of power being put down,with just an occasional mild rub. You might not want to underestimate the semi-elliptics quite so fast...........IMO.
 
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AJ/FormS said:
Before you blame the suspension for that, might it have been the tires?
When the rear ride height is lowered, the springs are fairly flat, and on the street you will be hard-pressed to feel anything but sidewall flex, or possibly a little loosness in the rearmost shackle bushings......IMO.
Again, on the street this is no biggie.........IMO

I occasionally run 325/50-15s BFG-DRs in the stock 68 Barracuda tubs, with nearly flat rear springs, and with the "3/4" inch offset hanger kits. You cannot get a pinkie between the sidewalls and the tubs. But there is enough room that I can zoom around 90*corners,in the city, at 30 mph, with quite a bit of power being put down, with just an occasional mild rub. You might not want to underestimate the semi-elliptics quite so fast...........IMO.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with AJ here. With a zero arch rear spring there isn't a whole lot of side to side movement if all the bushings are in good condition and everything is installed properly. A lot of people do full suspension conversions because their cars handle poorly, when really what they needed was to rebuild the suspension and ditch the 14" rims and old worn out tires.

You can go further and replace the rear shackles with a set of spring sliders, pretty much takes all the side to side flex out of the rear mount. That's what I did on my Duster, in addition to running zero arch springs (there's a little arch not much though). Any lateral movement would have to come from the springs themselves. I run 295/35/18's on the back of that car, and there's very little lateral movement in the back when cornering. I don't have more than a 1/2" of clearance to anything back there, and I've never shifted anything around enough to rub when cornering.
 
AJ/FormS said:
Comments in the quote

I know this might not apply to you, but;
I occasionally run 325/50-15s BFG-DRs in the stock 68 Barracuda tubs, with nearly flat rear springs, and with the "3/4" inch offset hanger kits. You cannot get a pinkie between the sidewalls and the tubs. But there is enough room that I can zoom around 90* corners,in the city,at about 30 mph, with quite a bit of power being put down,with just an occasional mild rub. You might not want to underestimate the semi-elliptics quite so fast...........IMO.
Click to expand...

It could very well have been something else, however, the sidewall flex was immediately obvious when the car loaded into the corner, then it would get this weird shimmy, not a lot. I assumed because of the way that it moved that it was the axle.
 
If I remember, the track width is the same in the rear from 64-76. Never had anything like you are talking about. I always had good HD suspensions and the best tires I could afford.
 
Well, are there fiberglass leaf springs made for it? If I can reduce some of the weight on the axle that alleviates my other reason for going with a 4 link. I can make a Watt's link so even if the rear does move I can fix that problem. I know I need to go to the later front spindles for brakes but I guess I can cross that bridge when I get to it. . As far as the front and torsion bars, what is that like? Any vendors there?

I didn't really like the early A bodies but as weird as they are I kinda dig em now.
 
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