Mopar Guys...Alterkation Vs Built Stock Suspension

[PT64POLARA]

Hey guys. Just trying to get some feedback on what you guys are running in your mopars. My car, 1964 Dodge Polara 500, is running stock suspension with KYB's and a Firm Feel Front sway bar and a Hotchkis rear. Planning on doing to motor and tranny soon, so I going to go all out and do the suspension, brakes and steering. Here are the options....

1. Renforced stock K, 1" torsion bars, Riellys strut rods, Firm Feel tubular uppers, renforced stock lowers with factory swar bar tabs, Firm Feel sway bar, all poly bushings, greasable lower pins, Firm Feel steering box, Fast Ratio Pitman and Bilsteins. Viper 4 piston Brembo brakes with 13" rotors and hyrdoboost.

2. Alterkation with 13" Wilwoods and hydroboost.

Motor is going to be 500 horse BB.
Tranny a built 727.

[High Plains Mopars]

Advantages of a coil over suspension system-quickly adjust ride height, quickly change spring rates, compact, light weight, people are impressed by them.

Dis-advantage of coil overs- require some sort of fab work to adapt, expensive.

Advantages of tweaked stock system, reasonably easy to adjust ride height, inexpensive.

Dis-advantages of stock system-heavy, spring rate changes requrie a fair amount of work, bump steer issues, caster limitations.

What are you using the car for? How important is it to have the advantages above? How much coin are you willing to spend?

[PT64POLARA]

I have priced both out and I am open to both. I have had the car since I was 18 and I am now 24. Planning on keeping the car forever. Going to be mostly street use, but planing on some track time. I have driven cars with worked stock suspensions and was pretty happy. Just wanted to hear peoples thoughts of the alterkation.

[rjsjea]

I have had two different motors with my AlterK (BB and 6.1 hemi) and it makes fitting parts/removing motor 10 times easier. My car has not been on the road in some time, but I hear the rackNpinion feels great to drive vs the old box. Cuts like 85lbs off the front end too.

If you got the money it's worth it....after pricing out a total re-do and upgrade of the stock parts it was worth it to me to go AlterK.

[thedodgeboys]

I have the alterkation in my challenger; I love it, Rids nice turns better lots of room for herders and oil pan ect. If you have 3k put it in and enjoy it. It bolts in with the factory bolts for the k frame so no mods are needed meaning you can always go back to the old stock stuff later if you felt the need.
I am planning on doing the rear conversion next winter so it should balance it out quite well.
You can make the stock stuff work it just takes some time to get all the correct parts working together along with the correct mods to stiffen up the pieces.

[High Plains Mopars]

AlterK prices have gone up and prices start at $3500 for just the basic front system. Once you option it out with mounts, sway bars, brakes, etc, it can easily become a $5k system. Add in a rear system and you could be upwards to $10k in suspension. In the G machine world that may not be too bad depending on your personal objectives, which is why I asked the questions previously. To me that seems like a lot of coin to drop for some applications and a decent starting point for others. All depends on how your going to use it.

With XV selling their level 1 kit at $2500 for front and rear, it looks like a pretty decent vaule. If you shop carefully, you can come close to duplicating the XV kit for under $2k, but you'll have to dial in shocks.

So, for pure value, it is hard to beat the XV optimized stock set up. For lightweight, ease of service and pure wow factor, it is hard to beat the AlterK. Unlike some other makes of the same era, thestock mopar set up is actually pretty decent and doesn't require a lot of parts swapping to improve. The biggest drawback of teh stock system is weight, caster adjustment, and bump steer. With some work, those can all be overcome within the scope of normal street use.

[67autocross]

First off 1" torsion bars are not big enough to make a B body really handle well. Now the price of the stock vs the Alterktion.....

Stock
1. $530 16:1 box Flaming River ( I don't think Firm Feel can get 16:1 chucks any more.

2. $350 Tubular Control Arms

3. $50 Lower control arm plates

4. $350 For big torsion bars

5. $225 Good front shocks

6. $495 Front HD rebuild kit

7. $160 New pitman arm

8. $75 New idler arm

9. $275 Front Sway bar kit

10. $175 Heavy duty tie rod kit

11. $????? Weld K member, new trosion bar boots, streeting coupler, plus you could need new spindle depending on what type of brakes you want to run.

So to me it would take $3000 to do a good stock front end,thats doing all the work yourself.

Alterkation $ 4250

[High Plains Mopars]

Wow, I'd love to sell you parts. It does not need to cost that much to build up the stock system. Here is what it would cost to duplicate mine. I actually paid less since since I'm a scrounge hound and willing to barter on things;

1. $350 Firm Feel box (ratio can be subjective depending on application. If you want it real fast, $150 buys a quickner unit)
2. $25 for offset bushings instead of tubular arms (extra caster/camber for cheap)
3. $5 steel to brace control arms
4. $200 for t-bars
5. $300 for shocks ( hard to scrimp here)
6. $300 for a basic poly rebuild kit (although you can piece meal it together for different parts for less.)
7. $160 pitman
8. $75 idler
9. $100 front sway bar (you can find these for $50 at swap meets)
10. $50 solid tie rod sleeves (the sleeves flex, not the ends themselvs so why go bigger and add weight)
11. $0 weld up and brace the k

$1565 total for the front

Sure, you can get nuts on brakes and wheels and tires and such. In my case, brakes are $500 viper calipers, wheels were $50 Aero racing wheels, and tires were $400 M/T S/Rs.

Also, "good handling" is also subjective so 1" bars may or may not acheive the goal. That is why I asked the questions up front. If your just cruising to the show and shine, then a 1" bar may be just fine. If you use XV as the bench mark, most of their cars are using 1.12 bars as a starting point, so I'd say that is the entry level size for handlign and comfort, but I've also seen mopar guys complain that they thought the XV kit was too firm. If your autocrossing, 1.22 isn't big enough, so it is all in the eye, or butt, of the beholder as far as what size t-bar and s-bar combination will deliver the goods.

[67autocross]

Those are the prices from Firm Feels web site, not mine. I have done this twice to Mopars, once 15 years ago and about 5 years back. The car I'm doing right now is getting the Alterktion with a Panhard bar rear.
Back to the list :
1. A 24to1 box is to slow for ant type of handling unless your car goes 200mph. So I stick with my $550 on that one
2.Moog problem solver bushings are still over $100 for both sides and you can't get enough adjustment out of them for anything other that a driver street car.
3. Ok you could do it for $5, might even be free
4. $200 will get you 1" t bars not big enough for a B body to make it turn hard.
5. We agree on the shocks
6. If you buy one of those $300 poly "kits" half of it is junk, so you will still end up spending $500 on front end bushings.
7.Same
8.Same
9. For $100 you get a 40 year old sway bar, and 40 year old body roll the first time you take a corner.

Good handling is subjective, until a new mini van blows your doors off on some back road.

[High Plains Mopars]

Well 67autocross, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

To the original post of stock vs alterk;

The alterk is a very nice piece. its lightweight, shiny, and had good geometry, provides lots of room in the engine bay, and excellent customer support.

The XV Level 1 kit is well thought, highly engineered, tested, looks good, and provides smacking good value for a stock based system at half the price of an alterk.

You didn't say what kind of racing you do, but depending on what our doing, the coil over may or may not provide any advantage. At the dragstrip its light weight is an advantage. At an SCCA course its increased turning radius and radical departure from stock is a disadvantage because it will put you in a class competing against dedicated race machines that will eat your lunch.

IMO either way should provide decent results for you goals. It comes down to what you want to spend and how you want to look doing it.

[Bigblue73]

So what about the Hotchkiss system for the B & E Bodies that utilize the stock suspension. I looked at the pricing on the web and it seems subjective (read high) on some of the components.

[High Plains Mopars]

Hotchkiss produces some very good pieces as well, but they do tend to be at the higher end of the spectrum in price and a fully outfitted system from them is going to be around $3500+, which is close to alterkation territory. But again, intended usage needs to be considered.

Hotckiss upper arms are actually some of the better units out there and they have incorporated changes in camber gain and anti-dive in them that other manufacturers have overlooked. Their sway bars are adjustable to dial in under/oversteer. They have done leaf spring geomtery analysis as well and have a way of reducing roll steer. Given Hotchkiss' racing background, they have taken a slightly different approach in geometry corrections that a lot of other manufacturers have not considered much less done.

Based on the reports I've seen from various sources, a stock mopar is good for around .7 lateral accelleration number. Hotchkis claims with their system you can put it just around .95-.97. XV claims with their Level 1 set up you are going to be around .97 to 1.0 lateral. So in either case you have what appears to be a stock suspension system that can produce G numbers in excess of any late model sport sedan without getting into any fabrication of heavy modifications.

Now if you actually get into competition situtaions where rules dictate what can or can't be done with suspension pick up points and allowable modifications, then it becomes an entirely new ball game about which system works best. That is what I try to point out in some of these conversations is that there is more than one way to turn a corner and automomatically buying the biggest, baddest suspension isn't always the best answer, kinda like buying the bigegst camshaft doesn't necessarily make the most power if put in the wrong application.

I guess we're actually lucky to be at a point where we can have these kind of talks about mopar suspensions. Until a few years ago, the options available were pretty limited to all custom work.

[67autocross]

I'm sure both kits are great and a huge leap forward from stock, but the only place a XV level 1 car is going to pull a 1g lateral is in the advertisement.
When Car and Driver tested the XV level 2 system it pulled 0.90g and cost 10 grand more then the level 1. My best guess after logging 200k miles in 2 mopars with big torsion bars and koni shocks and all the old tricks to get these cars to handle is you would be lucky to get these cars to pull 0.85g.
Anyway it's still nice to see people taking an interst in these old cars and trying to make them handle, for years every time I would go to the local hang outs all the other mopars guys only wanted to set their cars up for 1/4 mile action.

[CFster]

I too, have a 64 Polara 500, and have installed an AlterK.

[Bjkadron]

Well... Their is another option. Air rid suspensions (they changed their name but I can't remember it) has a nice kit for Mopars. you could beef up the stock components and then add air to quickly adjust the spring rates(quicker than coils). You don't loose steering radius and with their "shockwave" bags they include adjustable shocks. I still haven't decided what I'm going to do on my Duster. I'm leaning towards the beefed up stock. Mostly because I can do it piece by piece. I'm also planning some custom work. But I just thought I'd bring up the air bags.

[PT64POLARA]

CFster...Car looks great. How do you like the Alterkation? What are you running for rear suspension?

[Dave@Hellwig]

If you're in the market for sway bars, we released our tubular 1-3/8" front sway bar 55903 for 64-69 B-Body applications earlier this year. It features laser cut and CNC formed K-member brackets that are some of the nicest out there in the industry. This bar works well with our 6909 adjustable rear sway bar for 64-70 B-Body applications


55903 Installed



K-member brackets



6909 Installed

[CFster]

CFster...Car looks great. How do you like the Alterkation? What are you running for rear suspension?

Stock type rear suspension.

The biggest drawback to the AlterKation is the turning radius, which isn't great. That and it doesn't seem to have the suspension travel the stock one has. Seems if I can catch "air" easier with the front end if I go over a quick rise in the road. Not really an issue though - only happened to me once or twice.

[PT64POLARA]

Great looking car! Also, one more quick question, what size are you running for wheels and tires?