Suspension Help!

[wrayturbo]

Hi everyone,
I recently inherited the 65 GTO my father and I build several years back. Essentially I built the motor and he took car of the chassis. It is a completly stock car but not numbers matching or anything that would make me want to keep it status quo. I put a 400 in with ram air 4 heads, etc etc. I actually have been participating in local auto-x events and drag events for years in my little turbo awd Mitsubishi and plan on continuing with that particular car. I love the way the classic autocross cars look. I want to make the goat have the LOOK of a goodguys autocross car and was wondering what the cheapest route I could take suspension wise. Of course I do not want to compromise safety in doing so.
Thanks for your time,
Dave

[wrayturbo]

Hi everyone,
I recently inherited the 65 GTO my father and I build several years back. Essentially I built the motor and he took car of the chassis. It is a completly stock car but not numbers matching or anything that would make me want to keep it status quo. I put a 400 in with ram air 4 heads, etc etc. I actually have been participating in local auto-x events and drag events for years in my little turbo awd Mitsubishi and plan on continuing with that particular car. I love the way the classic autocross cars look. I want to make the goat have the LOOK of a goodguys autocross car and was wondering what the cheapest route I could take suspension wise. Of course I do not want to compromise safety in doing so.
Thanks for your time,
Dave
Could I just do 2" drop spindles and 2" lowering springs in the front? If I have to tub it front or rear to fit the wheel I want that will be no big deal. What could I do for the rear tho..

[Ben@SpeedTech]

65 is a great year for GTOs. :)

You're in the right spot Dave. There are plenty of early A body guys that have gone before you to seek advice from. Here are a couple thoughts I can see right off.

Create a game plan, and make sure of what you realistically want. Do you really only want to lower the car? Or in the back of your mind you plan to try autocrossing it? Make your suspension modification choices based on what you really want. If your budget is super low, sometimes waiting a while to save up for the right parts the first time is a good bet and a better choice.

4" of drop via 2" Spindles and 2" springs is a lot of drop, like in many cases too much. There's potential for making the poor GM suspension geometry worse, and sometimes drop spindles cause issues with wheel interference at the steering arm. On top of that 4" is just plain pretty low. Generally speaking, I think most pro touring cars are 2-3" drop, especially cars that will see a lot of street driving. When I first dropped my wagon a few years ago I went 4" mostly for the look. It rode terrible and bumpsteer was out of control. After I studied, asked around and went shopping, I went through and re designed the entire suspension. Despite all the people who told me to slam it for better handling I went only 2" on the drop. With the right parts combo the car now handles like it's on rails.

To answer your question, the cheapest way is cut the factory springs and add 17" + wheels and tires. This isn't the best however. Factory springs are old and will sag even more once you cut them. The rears will fall out of place every time you jack the car up. The car likely won't have much of a change in how it handles or rides, unless you cut them enough where it rides on the snubbers, and that opens a whole new meaning of the term stiff suspension and rebound over bumps. Remember the lowered mini trucks of the '80s?

The next step in price would be a set of lowered springs. Unfortunately when you buy a lowered spring, drop amount is relative to stock height with good springs. Chances are your springs have sagged over time and I've heard of many stories where a dropped spring was installed and the car was minimally lower, or wasn't any lower, or I even heard one case where it actually raised the car. It's a bit of a gamble to where it'll end up in ride height. Nothing worse than cutting or buying springs and finding the car didn't end up where you anticipated. Having to tear everything apart again (and again) until you have what you want can be frustrating, time consuming, and costly. After owning a coil spring car and going through this I'm pretty well convinced now using a coilover conversion is a good alternative if it fits the budget. It's not the cheapest, but for the value and looking to where the project might head in the future it might be a good alternative to consider.

You mentioned that you've done some racing, in particular autocross. Simply lowering a car tends to give folks a false impression that they can now go racing and the car will mimic the top performers out there. It works for the look, but realistically not much more. If you want to make the car handle better, and likely you will because you've already felt the thrill of racing, "cheap" is a relative term. Perhaps you should rephrase it to "How can I turn this into a pro touring car for the best value?"

Just from personal experience (and others agreeing) cheap performance parts aren't always a good value. You gotta remember you often get what you pay for. With that said, thinking the most expensive must be the best isn't necessarily true either. What I suggest to folks is consider the best bang for the buck. Again, I'm assuming that you won't be content with just lowering the car, but will want better performance...at some point.

While you're doing your research and deciding where you want the project to head, if you decide to start ordering suspension parts, please take a minute to look here (http://www.speedtechperformance.com/index.cfm/page/ptype=results/category_id=76/home_id=-1/mode=cat/cat76.htm). Our reputation speaks for itself and we're happy to help you through making quality decisions if this is your first experience with an old muscle car. Our prices are very reasonable for the effort we put into the quality, and our parts are well matched and perform well.

Hope this helps get you thinking.

[wrayturbo]

65 is a great year for GTOs. :)

You're in the right spot Dave. There are plenty of early A body guys that have gone before you to seek advice from. Here are a couple thoughts I can see right off.

Create a game plan, and make sure of what you realistically want. Do you really only want to lower the car? Or in the back of your mind you plan to try autocrossing it? Make your suspension modification choices based on what you really want. If your budget is super low, sometimes waiting a while to save up for the right parts the first time is a good bet and a better choice.

4" of drop via 2" Spindles and 2" springs is a lot of drop, like in many cases too much. There's potential for making the poor GM suspension geometry worse, and sometimes drop spindles cause issues with wheel interference at the steering arm. On top of that 4" is just plain pretty low. Generally speaking, I think most pro touring cars are 2-3" drop, especially cars that will see a lot of street driving. When I first dropped my wagon a few years ago I went 4" mostly for the look. It rode terrible and bumpsteer was out of control. After I studied, asked around and went shopping, I went through and re designed the entire suspension. Despite all the people who told me to slam it for better handling I went only 2" on the drop. With the right parts combo the car now handles like it's on rails.

To answer your question, the cheapest way is cut the factory springs and add 17" + wheels and tires. This isn't the best however. Factory springs are old and will sag even more once you cut them. The rears will fall out of place every time you jack the car up. The car likely won't have much of a change in how it handles or rides, unless you cut them enough where it rides on the snubbers, and that opens a whole new meaning of the term stiff suspension and rebound over bumps. Remember the lowered mini trucks of the '80s?

The next step in price would be a set of lowered springs. Unfortunately when you buy a lowered spring, drop amount is relative to stock height with good springs. Chances are your springs have sagged over time and I've heard of many stories where a dropped spring was installed and the car was minimally lower, or wasn't any lower, or I even heard one case where it actually raised the car. It's a bit of a gamble to where it'll end up in ride height. Nothing worse than cutting or buying springs and finding the car didn't end up where you anticipated. Having to tear everything apart again (and again) until you have what you want can be frustrating, time consuming, and costly. After owning a coil spring car and going through this I'm pretty well convinced now using a coilover conversion is a good alternative if it fits the budget. It's not the cheapest, but for the value and looking to where the project might head in the future it might be a good alternative to consider.

You mentioned that you've done some racing, in particular autocross. Simply lowering a car tends to give folks a false impression that they can now go racing and the car will mimic the top performers out there. It works for the look, but realistically not much more. If you want to make the car handle better, and likely you will because you've already felt the thrill of racing, "cheap" is a relative term. Perhaps you should rephrase it to "How can I turn this into a pro touring car for the best value?"

Just from personal experience (and others agreeing) cheap performance parts aren't always a good value. You gotta remember you often get what you pay for. With that said, thinking the most expensive must be the best isn't necessarily true either. What I suggest to folks is consider the best bang for the buck. Again, I'm assuming that you won't be content with just lowering the car, but will want better performance...at some point.

While you're doing your research and deciding where you want the project to head, if you decide to start ordering suspension parts, please take a minute to look here (http://www.speedtechperformance.com/index.cfm/page/ptype=results/category_id=76/home_id=-1/mode=cat/cat76.htm). Our reputation speaks for itself and we're happy to help you through making quality decisions if this is your first experience with an old muscle car. Our prices are very reasonable for the effort we put into the quality, and our parts are well matched and perform well.

Hope this helps get you thinking.
Thanks so much for your input! It reminds me of a saying we have in our club... "Fast, Reliable, and Cheap... Pick 2 because you can't have all three"
I really am not interested in ever tracking this car as I already have a purpose built track car. It will simply be a car to go to cruises and meets. My only goal is for it to look and sound cool. It sounds like cutting springs is an OK way to go to at least see how low I want to go with the car. In a modern car this is usually a big NO but all of the springs on my Mitsu are "behive" shaped and have a specific seat diameter so It makes sense. I'll cut a coil out and we can go from there. Thanks again!
-Dave

[wrayturbo]

Thanks so much for your input! It reminds me of a saying we have in our club... "Fast, Reliable, and Cheap... Pick 2 because you can't have all three"
I really am not interested in ever tracking this car as I already have a purpose built track car. It will simply be a car to go to cruises and meets. My only goal is for it to look and sound cool. It sounds like cutting springs is an OK way to go to at least see how low I want to go with the car. In a modern car this is usually a big NO but all of the springs on my Mitsu are "behive" shaped and have a specific seat diameter so It makes sense. I'll cut a coil out and we can go from there. Thanks again!
-Dave
89232
I really like this look.

[wrayturbo]

Where can I look for wheels such as this? Also what type of width and offset can I squeeze in there? 89602

[BMR Sales]

Dave, Some good questions, but you've told yourself the Equation - Fast, Reliable, & Cheap, Pick Two, and even sometimes that doesn't work out.

As Ben said, get a Game Plan together. Work the Plan as Money provides.

When it comes to saving Money, look in the Classifieds as you never know when somebody is going in a different direction and you can pick up a good deal. I just got an eMail from someone that had to change directions due to life changes - he was having to sell off his LS/T56 combo.

That last picture has some pretty radical flares so they could fit the Meats under there. That gets into Body Fab.

T.C.

[marolf101x]

this one's a bit old, but this car has been put through the wringer MANY, MANY times.
We've had this car on 17 and 18" CCW's (the same looking wheel). I think these are 18's:

89611

Here's a link to everything we offer for the A-Body cars:
http://www.ridetech.com/store/musclecars/?subcats=Y&features_hash=V269.V328