Stiff front end looking at aftermarket solutions

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just got the upper control arms in.
Will wait until i get my strut rods, before it goes up on the jack stands.
have started reading up on bumps steer and how to measure for it.
IMG_1893.jpg

Alway thought it was just the tie rod end being level with the spinal.
Seem it's a bit more complicated than that.
 
Front end alignment-Drag Racing.PNG

Just putting this up were i can find it.
Will be starting the disassembly tomorrow.........
 
that is how our Demon..Duster and Dart were set up and then i got stupid and changed the Dart and Duster over to a coil over shock front end...and they suck at transferrring weight...IN fact I just changed the Dart back to 6 cylinder torsion bars...90/10 shocks....
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I have found the same thing !
 
Just order my front Strut rods.
Now looking at drag/ slant 6 Torsion Bars
have only found one place that i can get them. Firm Feel has a .845........not sure that any smaller then what i have.

E Body with Factory AC, original 318 car
 
We need a new test.
I'm thinking to get the chassis up high enough to let the wheels hang. Then push the T-bars out. Then, shocks still off; jack the wheel up somehow to then just rip the jack out and watch the wheel fall down in freefall.
What'll that tell you? Idk, I'm not a racer, but I'll watch that video at least 10 times lol.
Remember to leave enough shock on it, for landing,lol.

I would like to use some sort of measuring device like a fish scale.........think i would max the scale out with my current setup.



Use a bathroom scale between your floor jack and the lower control arm
Here's the first step!
I should have cleaned the bathroom scale. Half way up is 150 pounds

 
Yeah man you got a problem alrightee

I'm guessing the UCA bushings are pretensioned, possibly the lower as well, but probably not.
New test;
Jack that assembly up to about the midpoint of travel, with the scale as before. Read the scale.
Then loosen the LCA pivot pin a couple of turns and smack it with a brass hammer to loosen the pin from the tube.
Read the scale.
Ima thinking it won't change much, but I gotta rule it out. Leave everything as it is.
Here's what I'm thinking; I have seen this before; The UCA adjusting bolts are probably seized in the bushings. The alignment guy, just reefed on them during the last alignment, and twisted the bushings up, putting a serious preload on the system. If I'm right, the next part of this test will prove it.
OK Part 2
Read the scale. If it is less than 100 pounds, crank it up until it is about there; but make sure you are not compressing any bumpstops.
read the scales again.
Slowly loosen the UCA adjusting bolts, watching for the cams to unwind. If they don't unwind of their own selves, they may be pinched in the saddles, so give the bolts a few bops with a brass hammer while watching the scales. If I'm right the bushings will unwind, relax, and the weight will fall to whatever that assembly weighs which should be less than 100pounds, Ima guessing 45/55 pounds.
If that happens, try to drive the bolts out. I bet you can't. I have had to torch those off and replace both bushings and all the hardware. But when I reassemble them, I coat the bolt shanks with anti-seize.Just the shanks.

There is a slim chance that your ball-joints are too tight. Moog or TRW joints are pretty good. But all others are built differently and tend to be extremely tight when out of the box. But tend to get extremely loose in the first hundred miles, or less.
You will know if the joints are too tight, while driving, because, the steering will not self center, and you will be steering the car back and forth ALL the time, because the dang car continues to go in whatever direction you steer it. This is extremely frustrating because the alignment can be perfect, yet it's a PITA to drive.If this has ever happened to you, in all likelyhood you didn't drive it 10 miles before turning around and returning to the installing shop.
But if you have NOT experienced that, then your BJs are not too tight.

By this point, if the problem has not surfaced; I'm out of ideas.

Now, if you end up having to replace the UCA hardware be advised that in the MOOG A-body kit parts, the threading on them is too short, and they will not properly clamp the bushings in the saddles. You will have to get some hardened thick washers on there to move the nut down the shank into the threaded area.
Also, do not tighten any of those pivot bolts until the alignment is done and only tighten them at or near the final ride height, so you don't have a repeat of pretensioned UCA bushings.
Also; do not tighten the lower shock bolt, until the car is at ride height.
Also; be advised that even after everything is working right; anytime the suspension is not at ride height,going up or going down, it will be twisting up the bushings, and you will read that on the scale as increased weight. This is normal. The trick is that at ride height, the scale should read whatever that assembly itself would weigh when off the car, or near to it. And weigh more as the bushings get twisted.

Ok I almost forgot; I see how the assembly sticks just before full rebound. IDK what might be doing that, but my guess is that, that is the relaxed point of the UCA pretensioned bushings. Ima guessing. My second guess would be that the Upper BJ could be sticking there. But, If you put the shock back on, I think you will find that the suspension never naturally gets down that far.
 
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Ok thanks for your response.
lets see if i can answer a few of these.

I have already disabled the hole thing and all the suspension Weighs 65 LBS per side.

Car goes straight and center by itself, after a turn so no tight ball joints. All Ball Joints, tie rods idle arms, pitman arm, are all Moog part. Some 20 +year old Moogs but still in good conditions.

When i separated the upper control arm from the spindle the spindle fell down and the upper control arm didn't move. took grate force to move it up and down, and that's were the squawk is.
The bushing are factory bushing that i hollowed out the rubber and pressed in urethane bushings(also 20+years ago)

The one cam bolt came right out, the other required a light tap with a hammer. then a wig L jug L to remove it. same thing to get the upper control arm out after the cam bolts were removed.

As far as the upper and lower bump stops.Both have made clean spots so i'm getting full suspension travel.

These are the parts i'm replacing....should be Way Way smooth/free "R" when i'm done.

Adjustable Upper Control Arms for 70-74 E-body
Adjustable Strut Rod, 70-74 E-body

Looking for a good deal on some /6 aka drag racing torsion bars.
found one place but it's a .845 and not so sure that my original 318 ones are around that size
 
I figured it would be the uppers. But if the bolts were not seized then the bushings were simply pre-tensioned at the wrong altitude.
That pre-tension is part of the Chrysler shock rate, and works very well on the street, when it is correctly tensioned.
But it has no place in drag-racing.
You are moving in the right direction.
 
I will do another video when its all back together. knocking the wood out from under it was quite disappointing
Next time should be a little bit more impressive as it bounces off the rebound bumper..........should drop like a rock.
we will see.
 
The pre tension could also have been by me some 20+ years ago.
I may not have cleaned the upper control arm bushing metal shell well enough, before i pressed in the urethane replacement bushings.
They came with lube and didn't make any noise when first installed.

Mother nature. and time, caused them to get tighter.
Before i undid the bolts you could see the urethane slipping in the shell. but was protesting a lot!
I guess that's better then sloppy Loose:eek:
 
You have urethane upper bushings? Without lube around the outter diameter,between it and the shell ?
Well that explains it.Those urethanes are more like bushings or bearings. And since they are about 10,000(guessing,lol) times less compliant than the rubbers, If they seize up in the shells,then Hyup that explains it.
Not to laugh at you, but to the situation; but; lol,there it is.
 
You can laugh all you want. I'm good at laughing at myself.
The only sad thing about this is i should have done this last year! Instead of bigger slick(26X10X15 to 28X11X15) and having to cut, relocate my spring perches and all of that to make them fit.
I'm probably going to have to add more air pressure to my rear slick to keep them from being smashing with all that weight transfer i'm going to get........a man can dream.....:D
 
Does anybody know, who on here, sales the Reilly MotorSports (RMS) Suspension parts?
I have a question for every body, but especially for him/her.

Was installing my upper control arms today and noticed that the upper control arm completely misses the rebound bumper. The tube goes right around it. pictures in a minute.

So i set the new RMK upper on top of my stock one........look a little short......Is adjustable so can probably fix that. but in the instructions it says that you should leave 2 thread sticking out of the jam nut. and that would work for 99% of the vehicles. so that is were they are in the picture. soon to come.

There is no marking on the control arms to verify that they are right. I did verify that the part number was right on my invoice. RMS2003(remember this is a E Body.)

For a racer, it's almost a plus that it miss the bump stop. Because it give me 1 more inch of up or rebound travel. I don't like it banging metal to metal on the rebound support. If this is the right upper control are i will still need to address this.

When the Control Arm missing the bump stop is what started me wondering if it is the right one.................
 
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Well i'm impressed with Reilly MotorSports(RMS)
I sent them a email, and since i'm impatient I found there facebook page and ask there. he responded immediately and said that he had already sent me a email.

Everything is good and going back out to put it back together.
 
Well They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words...........so how many for a video:D
If you haven't watched the first video above you should watch that one first.

Tell me what you think!



@AJ/FormS
 
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Ok you got super stock springs?
Any idea on the pinion angle?
Do you have a snubber?
Front sway bar or none?
How’s your ride height?
Air pressure in your slicks?
When you leave the starting line, what’s your routine?
Just curious
 
Ok you got super stock springs?
Any idea on the pinion angle?
Do you have a snubber?
Front sway bar or none?
How’s your ride height?
Air pressure in your slicks?
When you leave the starting line, what’s your routine?
Just curious

Pinion angle 6 degrees noise down
No front or rear sway bar
Ride height?????? In the front, is 5" of up travel. With this new upper control arms
i my have more now.
At the moment, i'm running 15 psi. With less i just wad up the slick.(running tubes)
I stall at 1500 and then wack it off the line.(4200 stall)
What did i miss......o and yes i have a pinion snubber that is set about 1" of the floor.
 
Pinion angle 6 degrees noise down
No front or rear sway bar
Ride height?????? In the front, is 5" of up travel. With this new upper control arms
i my have more now.
At the moment, i'm running 15 psi. With less i just wad up the slick.(running tubes)
I stall at 1500 and then wack it off the line.(4200 stall)
What did i miss......o and yes i have a pinion snubber that is set about 1" of the floor.
I got to crawl around a B/SA 440 sixpack E body
They accomplished mid 10s with similar to yours super stock springs, I bought there old springs, they tossed the pinion snubber away, as they claimed didn’t need it with those springs.
They stiffened the front, and limited the drop of the suspension, with a sway bar, and the rubber stops on their car only allowed a small amount of up travel. This allowed the wheels to come up quickly and they had average wheelies of 70-100’ also no drag shocks.
Similar to yours they had around 5-6 deg of nose down.
I am pretty sure the front end height was set at I would call at race low height.
Bring the ride height down, not up.
I think the class was limited to 9” slicks.
Air pressure is a matter of preference, but 9-12 is pretty normal, and I’ve ran 6-7 to get a car off the line.
Try and not load the suspension any off the line, as that was a loss of a 1/10 every time.
I get what your trying to do by allowing the front end to come up easily, but your faster cars limit the drop, as that allows chassis rotation.
Do you have any side profile shots of your car at rest? Any pics of your car leaving the line?
 
I'm jealous. I will get you some pick in a minute.
 
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this was with my old bent/worn out ss spring and 26x10x15 slick

Cuda launch 2.jpg


This is after i install my 4200 stall converter (previous was a 3000 stall) new SS Springs and spring relocation to fit my new 28x10.5x15

Its soooo close.jpg


This is a video from under the car. Yes stalling to high, was stalling at 2100 rpm. Now leave the line at 1500.

 
The way i look at it, is it's all about controlling the launch. The faster you go the siffer you need to make everything to restrain the torque and HP.
a 10 sec car need a lot of this. a High 11 sec car(11.90, 3860 pound car) need help to get that front end up and hold it off the line. And that's where i'm at.
I know with the right set up i should be able to make it hook with a 9" slick.........but in my mind that would be a major weight reduction plus much better shock to make that happen. as well as a close to 50/50 weight balance as well. I have a lot of weight to lift up there in the front. Not even an alu head to help out.

I hope i'm not coming off as a know it all. because i'm not!

I post up stuff here to learn and grow my hobby. When i bought this car back in the early 80's it was a bone stock 318 with 276 gears out back that ran 19s. in all of these year, this pore boy has milked it the 11s.
 
I don’t know crap either.
My best times with both my current junks were always leaving the line at as close to a idle I could.
That video looks like you torqued the axle some. If I felt the axle move I backed it down, and nailed it. They want all the travel they can get.
 
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