1969 Skylark Suspension options ?

[JEFFTATE]

Hey everybody ,
I am trying to get some ideas for rebuilding and improving the suspension on my brother-in-laws' 69 Skylark.

He's having the car restored and wants to improve the suspension.
Budget is a slight concern. He's not going all out street-racer or anything.
It's still gonna' have the 350 Buick Engine , Turbo 350 trans , and stock appearing 15" wheels ... with stock hubcaps.
He wants to make it handle a little better and add 4-wheel disc brakes.

But , I'm trying to advise him on a good / improved suspension.
I've seen several threads about A-body improvements.
Some mentioned the use of taller "B" body or "F" body spindles and
upper control arms to correct camber gain issues.

I was 'thinking" we may just do tall spindles , upper arms, poly(graphite) bushings , antirollbars , a quick ratio steering box , and the biggest factory GM-type disc brake setup we could fit behind the 15" wheels as a minimum / cost effective improvement.

I've seen some products / kits from ATS, Global West , Hotchkis ,and Just Suspension , just to name a few .


Does anybody have any actual experience on doing one of these ?
Got any suggestions or advise ?

[MonzaRacer]

Ok so if its limited funds i would do this:
Get tall ball joints and SC&C control arms add on some good adjustable shocks for now and depending on how low he wants to go think of maybe eibach front springs for now.
Go with a Lee Steering box and look for some bigger sway bars and use poly bushings.
Up grade the wheels and tires to something like 17s or 18s.
Now for the rear I would step up to Air Ride Technologies CoolRide in rear, and swap in a decent sway bar but not too big and make sure you use seperate lines( I had single lines to both sides and used fittings kind of like airshocks,, very easy to deal with.

[ponchopwr70]

Call up Marc at sc+c he'll know what to do if you tell him how much your willing to spend. Check my pt garage for a list of what I've done.

[JEFFTATE]

Thanks Guys !

[Apogee]

15" wheels are going to limit your options somewhat with respect to tires, brakes, and front suspension geometry as a lot of the taller ball-joints and things just won't fit inside small wheels. Marcus will fill you in on all of the details I'm sure, but if you can convince your brother to go with 17" wheels I think you'd have a much better performing 'lark in the end. Besides, 17's are the new 15's anyway, right?

Tobin

[JEFFTATE]

15" wheels are going to limit your options somewhat with respect to tires, brakes, and front suspension geometry as a lot of the taller ball-joints and things just won't fit inside small wheels. Marcus will fill you in on all of the details I'm sure, but if you can convince your brother to go with 17" wheels I think you'd have a much better performing 'lark in the end. Besides, 17's are the new 15's anyway, right?

Tobin

Ok.
I'll try to convince him to go with 17" wheels.
Thanks !

[JEFFTATE]

Ok , He's getting ready to buy something.
I thought I would bump this thread and see if there were any current responses.

Anyone ???

[JEFFTATE]

Just Suspension has a complete kit that uses some pretty good components like Global West a-arms and Wilwood brakes , but the kit doesn't address any Spindle issues.
And he's decided to run a 9-inch rear-end, so we gotta work with that .

[ajjones44]

I recommend calling either SC&C or call frank over at gpsuperstore.com to have them put you a kit together.

[Marcus SC&C]

The smartest way to go about choosing suspension components is to ask yourself what you want the car to do,determine where the car`s problem areas are then select the parts that will best fix them while staying within your budget.
The A body`s biggest problem area is the front end geometry. It`s horrible,literally backwards in some regards. To my mind that makes it broken and it needs to be fixed before you can proceed. That will help give you a solid foundation for your other mods to build on. A arms alone are incapable if fixing geometry. They can only change static alignment. To fix what ails it you need to make big changes in the vertical placement of several suspension pickup (or pivot) points. You need taller spindles or taller ball joints to do that. It can`t be just any taller unit,it should be the right height and have the steering arms in the proper location as well or you can do as much harm as good. Do a search here on B body spindles and you`ll see what I mean. They`re not direct fit,they do improve the geometry but they really ruin the steering geometry due to their improper steering arm location. Anyway,choose your method for correcting the geometry. Now we get info A arms. Not because they look cool but because once you make some serious geometry changes the stock upper A arms will simply be the wrong length,offset and have the wrong ball joint mounting angle to work on the car anymore. You want to get components that are made to work together because many of the neat-o looking arms on the market are simply tubular copys of stock arms and won`t help you at all. The right ones will help you achieve a really good performance alignment that will compliment the new geometry. If you want to go all out you can do tubular lowers too but their gains will be smaller than the uppers. SPC lowers are one exception with revised geometry for improves tire clearance at high caster settings,shim adj. ride height,optional modern progressive rate jounce bumpers etc. Stay away from poly bushings in most applications. Delrin is a much better choice for performance vehicles.

For brakes you`ll be limited by wheel size. 17" wheels open up a LOT of great choices such as variations of C5 Corvette brakes and many of them can be used with the stock spindles and a Stage 2-Plus tall ball joint suspension package. That makes a great combination and 17" steel wheels with enough caliper clearance for C5 brakes can be had from Wheel Vintiques. 17" Buick Rallys would be sweet!

A Lee fast ratio (12:1) 670 steering box is always a good idea for a car like this and will totally transform the feel of the car.

In the rear you need to get rid of the factory limp-o-flex stamped arms and soft rubber bushings to hook the car well and control axle movement in cornering. The real trick is to do that without introducing a lot of additional binding! By far the best combination we`ve found are Currie Currectrac arms. They`re light,strong,locate the rear very well but allow a wide range of articulation without unnecessary binding due to their greasable Johnny joints.

Finish it off with a good set of matched rate springs from SPC Performance, Eibach etc. and a good set of shocks (don`t get cheap here!) such as Bilsteins,Konis or better yet an adjustable shock like Alston Varishocks and you`ll be pretty well set.

Swaybars, I saved em for last because they`re a tuning aid and you can`t tune what you haven`t built yet. If you correct the front geometry a huge front bar isn`t necessary so hang loose on the front bar for now. Most of these cars respond well to a rear bar though. Their mounting configuraion makes them less effective than their dia. would normally indicate so you don`t have to worrk much about going too large on the back. 1" normally work nicely for street cars. That should pretty well do it and would amount to one of our typical packages. Do this car right and it`s performance and drivability will far exceed your expectations. :drive: Mark SC&C

[JEFFTATE]

Thanks Marcus !
I have been combing your website and Global West' website for info. / options.