Wheels, brakes, suspension sequence

[MitchDart]

OK- Newb question here. '64 Dart 270, everything stock so far, recently purchased but has been neglected for years.

I need advice on sequence of upgrades. The suspension front and rear is soft and sad, feels like a sailboat gong around corners and hit any bump at highway speed and it's a white knuckle scenario. Drum brakes are decent for now.

I want to upgrade to some 15" rims, disc brakes, and obviously needs suspension work. The intent is to make it a daily driver with slightly more aggressive than stock stance, but nothing close to a hotrod.

My thought is new wheels and tires first, then have suspension fixed/ upgraded with the new wheels on, then disc brake upgrade. Is that the right sequence to avoid double work?

Caveat is that I'm not "doing the work" unfortunately, no space, no tools, no skills. So I'll be paying to have the work done.

Any suggestions or advice? Much appreciated.

 

[DartVadar]

At the very least make sure the alignment is good, if you get new tires while the alignment is off you may wear out the tires pre-maturely

 

[krazykuda]

OK- Newb question here. '64 Dart 270, everything stock so far, recently purchased but has been neglected for years.

I need advice on sequence of upgrades. The suspension front and rear is soft and sad, feels like a sailboat gong around corners and hit any bump at highway speed and it's a white knuckle scenario. Drum brakes are decent for now.

I want to upgrade to some 15" rims, disc brakes, and obviously needs suspension work. The intent is to make it a daily driver with slightly more aggressive than stock stance, but nothing close to a hotrod.

My thought is new wheels and tires first, then have suspension fixed/ upgraded with the new wheels on, then disc brake upgrade. Is that the right sequence to avoid double work?

Caveat is that I'm not "doing the work" unfortunately, no space, no tools, no skills. So I'll be paying to have the work done.

Any suggestions or advice? Much appreciated.

Well, here are some things to think about:

1. The 10" drums for the small bolt pattern (4" bolt circle) are now obsolete and you cannot buy them at parts stores.

So

You may want to consider upgrading to the larger 4 1/2" bolt circle 10" rear drums. I think that these are still available.

then you would want matching bolt pattern disc brakes. This would mean that you need to find the 73 - 76 a-body front disc brakes and also the upper control arms to go with them.



If you are running the original engine for your car (slant 6 or 273 v-8), you may want to swap a 73-76 8 1/4" rear axle. If you plan to put a bigger small block in, you may want to hunt down an 8 3/4" axle (they are expensive, but stronger). The 8 3/4" axle was made from 67-72 for the a-bodies (I'm not sure if they were available from 64-66). However these years used the small bolt pattern 4" bolt circle. You can get replacement axles that will fit the 8 3/4" axle with the 4 1/2" bolt pattern.


You should figure out which way you are going on your brakes so you know what bolt pattern rims to buy when you get new rims and tires, so you don't have to buy them twice for the different bolt patterns (4" vs 4 1/2"). Or wait until the suspension and brake upgrades are done to get them.


We need to know what engine you have now and plan to use in the future to give you some options for upgrading the suspension for better handling.


You may want to do the suspension upgrades before the brakes as the front brakes would be easy to change with rebuilding the front suspension.

 

[ArizonaKid]

I'd start with the brake upgrades for now, and like krazykuda said, upgrading to the big bolt wheel pattern would save a lot of trouble in the future, with not having to find small bolt pattern stuff. A disk brake setup from a later A body would be a good way to go on the brakes, I have manual disk/drum on my '74 that I love.

An 8-1/4 would probably be fine as long as you aren't drag racing down the backroads every night. I stress probably because I dont know what your motors going to be.

So, with all that in mind, I'd start with getting the parts for the disc brake upgrade, Its going to be either a pain to find, expensive, or both. then, upgrade the suspension, the rear leaves are probably going to need an upgrade, what I did was take some mid size individual leaves from a B body set, and clamped it into the old A springs. This was a massive help to the tired old springs, and cheap too!

Any suspension parts that weren't upgraded with the brake switch can be upgraded as the second step, I can't name off what they would be off the top of my head though.

And finally, get the new big bolt pattern wheels balanced and shod, bolt them on and drive away!

If I forgot anything, I'm sure somebody else will point it out. Good luck, and happy driving!

Also I want to see before and after pictures.

 

[MitchDart]

Thanks for the input so far! Plan to keep the slant 6, had a serious valve job and tune and runs nice. Never intend to swap out motors, maybe a rebuild of current eventually.
But nice and smooth up to about 55 mph. But maybe I had it bass awkwards- get the discs and bolt diameter figured first, then to suspension, and finally wheels.
As I feared its kind of a package deal- each part won't succeed long w/out the others.but that sounds like $5k in one fell swoop. Ouch.