55 Belair rear suspension (looking for ideas)

[nbasch]

Building a 55 2 door, plan is to have a good driver, long distance or cruise in car, Have tubular A Arms, Drop Spindles, 13" Disc and coilovers for the front, doing LS swap soon and wanting opinions for rear suspension, Has a D60 sitting under it and not sure if it will stay or go, Don't plan to do tubs at moment so just seeing what everyones thoughts are.

[jaybee]

I'd say for your purposes you don't anything that special. Start with a good set of leaf springs. There are any number of good choices for your car. Posies Super Slide springs are reasonably priced and have plastic buttons in the ends of the leaves for less friction...or spring liners can be purchased or even made.

That LS is going to provide some good torque. It'll help the car hook to modify your leaf springs with a second leaf which has a front which comes up clear to the front spring eye of the main leaf. The extra stiffness in the front of the spring helps it locate the axle better. Google "Mopar Super Stock spring" and you can learn a lot about that concept. Any decent metropolitan area will have a spring shop that can help...usually they'll be involved in either 4wd or heavy truck specialties.

A good set of shocks. Again, multiple choices, but something better than the parts store shocks.

There are different schools of thought on spring eye bushings, which probably in part just means you need to find the right setup for your car. Poly bushings in front and rear eyes increase the amount of twist applied to the spring as the car leans in a corner, which acts much as a rear sway bar. Rubber bushings take up some of that twist, but obviously don't locate the spring quite as accurately. Poly in front, rubber in back might be a happy medium.

Trim the car out with a rear sway bar to balance whatever you're running on the front...and yes, you'll want one on the front if you don't have it. You might not need a rear bar at all if your front bar is fairly light and you're running all poly bushings in the leaf spring eyes. If you're running a more aggressive front bar and rubber leaf spring bushings you'll want more rear bar.