1964 A body suggestions

[drkearnel]

Hey all! New to the forum and just picked up a 64 Olds Cutlass/F85 this past week. Man, is that suspension and steering all over the road (clunks and clanks included).

I replaced the inner and outer tie rods, idler, centerlink and sway bar links. All with Moog.

clunks went away!! But it still feels like I’m ice skating on the road. Bumpsteert and pulls. it does need an alignment.

My question is, what’s next!? Ball joints are shot, control arm bushings look beat, coils and shocks, and disc brakes are all in line.

tubular control arms or new oem? Rebuild oem with better bushings?



stock ball joints? Tall ball joints?

In the end I want this car to handle and ride smoot and effortlessly down the road.

thanks!

[65 drop top]

I went with DSE on my 65, I'm happy with how it rides and drives. It is much firmer and responsive, not harsh though. It really is a huge improvement over the stock equipment.

[drkearnel]

Thanks for the reply! I wish I could afford a full DSE setup, but for now l, it’s way outta my league! Haha

Do you have opinions on why it feels so good? Added adjustments from control arms? Did you use tall ball joints? Etc.

[dhutton]

Give Mark at SC&C a call. He is a vendor here.

Don

[Ben@SpeedTech]

A big part of the issue is poor suspension geometry, along with worn out parts, flimsy factory suspension components, and maybe crappy tires too. Based on your post it might be best to do some homework before jumping into us all offering our opinions to answer your questions and recommending suspension packages. That way you're not just getting a bunch of opinions or just being told what to do, but you'll learn why you're doing it and can make better educated decisions to achieve the results you want in the future. A good place to start becoming familiar with improved handling is here on the forum and the "How to Make your Muscle Car Handle" book.

Here are some questions that will help determine what you need to focus on as you become more familiar with the parts and how they help achieve better performance-

• What's your budget? In the end a good quality pro-touring suspension that rides, drives and handles well is not cheap, but I think we can all attest it's worth it. Luckily there are different options and price ranges based on budget and performance desires. Although it may be price tag tempting, stay away from cheap ebay type parts that are built off shore.
  
• Will you upgrade a little at a time or all at once? Having a game plan will keep you excited and motivated as you build the car.
• What are your expectations from the car's capabilities? What you get out is based on what you put in.
• Will you street drive only, hit an occasional race event, or do you plan to get serious about racing at several events at some point?

Knowing these answers can narrow down what may be your best route to start upgrades.

[BMR Sales]

Did you align the Olds after you did the work? What is the shape of the tires?

[drkearnel]

A big part of the issue is poor suspension geometry, along with worn out parts, flimsy factory suspension components, and maybe crappy tires too. Based on your post it might be best to do some homework before jumping into us all offering our opinions to answer your questions and recommending suspension packages. That way you're not just getting a bunch of opinions or just being told what to do, but you'll learn why you're doing it and can make better educated decisions to achieve the results you want in the future. A good place to start becoming familiar with improved handling is here on the forum and the "How to Make your Muscle Car Handle" book.

Here are some questions that will help determine what you need to focus on as you become more familiar with the parts and how they help achieve better performance-

• What's your budget? In the end a good quality pro-touring suspension that rides, drives and handles well is not cheap, but I think we can all attest it's worth it. Luckily there are different options and price ranges based on budget and performance desires. Although it may be price tag tempting, stay away from cheap ebay type parts that are built off shore.
  
• Will you upgrade a little at a time or all at once? Having a game plan will keep you excited and motivated as you build the car.
• What are your expectations from the car's capabilities? What you get out is based on what you put in.
• Will you street drive only, hit an occasional race event, or do you plan to get serious about racing at several events at some point?

Knowing these answers can narrow down what may be your best route to start upgrades.

You bring up some very good points. I guess in reality, I am not looking for a full pro touring ride (at this time) I'm just looking to correct the poor geometry, bumpsteer and wandering that has come with this original 64' a body. Budget is low. Looking for the best options without spending $1000 on a arms. My goal right now is to get the front end reliable and safe, as well as implementing newer technology
[*]Will you upgrade a little at a time or all at once? Having a game plan will keep you excited and motivated as you build the car.
I will be doing everything at once
[*]What are your expectations from the car's capabilities? What you get out is based on what you put in.
Great question. I'm doing a low boost LS swap. Will be 95% street car, with maybe a trip or two to the track or autox just for fun. Looking to have this handle as least as well as my 99' Trans Am and enough stability to handle the ~500hp[/LIST]

[drkearnel]

Did you align the Olds after you did the work? What is the shape of the tires?

No alignment was done yet. Waiting until I get the rest of the front end completed. Tires are brand spanking new, on new wheels. Balanced and nitrogen filled.

[drkearnel]

I guess to give more insight. I'm a noob on the site, not with cars.

I'm going to do a JGC steering box swap, right stuff disc brakes, and bilstiens with w/e known name springs are a deal at that time.

My questions are: Will using .5" ball joints in stock upper control arms give any benefit towards correcting the camber and caster issues with these cars. Or is that pointless and I need to just pucker up and get tubular arms?

Has anyone ran tubular uppers and just rebuilt lowers to stay on a budget?

I will be running stock height for now since the wheels and tires the last guy just put on are almost too tight and wouldnt fit if I drop the front at all.

[dhutton]

Mark at SC&C will answer those questions. He is a good source of info on A bodies.

http://scandc.com/new/catalog/11

Don

[Reckn8]

We used ridetech Strong arms and coil overs on our 65 F/85

[65 drop top]

Thanks for the reply! I wish I could afford a full DSE setup, but for now l, it’s way outta my league! Haha

Do you have opinions on why it feels so good? Added adjustments from control arms? Did you use tall ball joints? Etc.

A nice set of shocks, springs, and sway bars would be a real nice starting point, and not too bad on the budget. IMO, that'll be the most "felt" upgrade. Any sponsors parts on this site would work just fine. You don't gain much from lower a arms so save the money there and rebuild the stock arms. Aftermarket taller spindles and upper arms help with geometry but unless you're really driving aggressive, stock rebuilt would be ok for a street cruiser. I think you can get a taller upper ball joint that help geometry a little bit, but I wouldn't over think it. Google Gulstrand mod, I believe you can relocate the stock upper arm by drilling new holes for better geometry, so that's free! Also, just my opinion again, but if you don't already have some decent tires and wheels that's probably a better investment than aftermarket suspension. You need some decent low profile tires, 17-18" handle good.

[Ben@SpeedTech]

Here's my experience, maybe it can spark some thoughts. My first phase of suspension was suggested by a company mentioned above, and all were popular name brand parts- all new steering linkage, adjustable upper arms, heavier lowered springs, adjustable smooth body (non coilovers) shocks and I boxed my lower factory arms and installed poly bushings. I used a 1/2" tall upper ball joint to help with camber and a 1/2" taller lower ball joint to help with bumpsteer. On the back I added aftermarket arms, lowered springs, and a factory rear sway bar. Topped it all off with 275-40-17s on 9.5" wheels and a "Pro Touring" alignment.

The Good- it made the car better than before, no question. The car was much more responsive, had a decent ride and looked plenty cool. It was nice for a street cruiser. This level of set up may be perfect for some folks.

The maybe Not So Good- I felt this set up couldn't take me to the level of performance I wanted when I occasionally went to the autoX. I tried 3 sets of springs and never quite got the ride height and spring rate I was after. All 3 different sets of springs on the rear sagged 1/2"+ over time. I adjusted the front upper arms once with the initial alignment and never adjusted them again. Although some folks that maybe adjust alignments for different race venues could take advantage of this I found that I could have bought solid tubular arms and had them aligned normally with shims and spent the cost difference elsewhere. The 1/2" tall joints help ...a little. But they won't make drastic changes like an ATS AFX tall spindle for example. I found the single adjustable shocks weren't really the type of valving I was after. I definitely had bind in the rear suspension which was hurting performance.

After coming to work at Speedtech I decided to give their full suspension package a try. There are a lot of design differences between the two suspensions and the car was way more aggressive in handling with the new suspension and coilover conversions. For me I felt this was what I was after. That was about 4 years ago and the only thing I've changed since then was I upgraded to a more autoX based shock valving and stickier tires. I'm still happy with the performance on the street and track.

What I wanted from my car may not be the same as your desires or the next guy's. Consider though many people new to Pro Touring do like I did- get your feet wet with some upgrades, get hooked and want to dive in. This is one of the reasons I suggest to really think about what you want from the car so you can get what you want up front rather than going through the cost of upgrading later.

Hope this helps a little. If you have any questions about suspensions and how certain parts affect your handling feel free to call our tech line at 435-628-4300. Our guys have many many years combined experience of building cars and all types of competitive racing. That insight and experience gets engineered into our parts too, check 'em out, click here for Speedtech's A body page.

[krom]

Aftermarket a-arms can't and wont change the geometry of the suspension enough to improve the handling. The most any of them will do is allow you to run more caster. Tall ball joints, and a bump steer kit will do more .

[BMR Sales]

Aftermarket a-arms can't and wont change the geometry of the suspension enough to improve the handling. The most any of them will do is allow you to run more caster. Tall ball joints, and a bump steer kit will do more .

Caster does affect handling!

More caster aids stability, especially at high speeds. More caster generally suits large, open,high-speed tracks. less off-power steering into corner / more on-power steering out of corner. Increased mid-corner control. better mid-corner control. Typically suits large, open, hi-speed tracks. Generally, more caster = more steering. Decreased suspension efficiency. Increased wheel centering. Decreased straight line stability. Need more camber (more camber change).

[krom]

Caster does affect handling!

More caster aids stability, especially at high speeds. More caster generally suits large, open,high-speed tracks. less off-power steering into corner / more on-power steering out of corner. Increased mid-corner control. better mid-corner control. Typically suits large, open, hi-speed tracks. Generally, more caster = more steering. Decreased suspension efficiency. Increased wheel centering. Decreased straight line stability. Need more camber (more camber change).

are you trying to say that adding a few degrees caster will make a larger improvement than changing the camber curve, and dialing out bump steer?

[Marcus SC&C]

OP, first off I`d like to invite you to give us a call and take advantage of our Free Suspension Counseling Service. Hot rods and their owners are all unique so I`m not a big fan of "One size fits most" solutions. We encourage people to select components based on technical merit, not ad hype and to select components that are appropriate of their application. This seems like it would be common sense but time and time again we see people putting "cool race car parts" on street cars which inevitably leads to disappointing real world results. In the very most simplistic terms I recommend that you:

1) Fix what`s broken. If the water pump is leaking all over the garage floor, fix it. Then move on to cool hot rod stuff.
2) Fix the weakest link in the chain, then go on to the next one etc. On this platform the shockingly poor front end geometry is a boat anchor for improving drive ability and performance and will reduce the effectiveness of any other mods you do so it should be fixed ASAP, see 1) it`s broken. This means introducing geometry correction in the form of relocating suspension and steering pickup points. The most cost effective way to do this well is the use of tall ball joints and matching upper A arms. We introduced this method on muscle cars about 17 years ago and it works just as well today. Note that just throwing taller ball joints onto an otherwise stock car almost always results in alignment and even travel/binding issues so buy a proven package or proceed with extreme caution.
3) Once the broken bits/weak links are corrected you can move on to tuning. Common sense it your friend. If you`re building a drag car, then select parts to optimize it for that purpose. If you`re building a serious auto cross car then optimize it for that. If you`re building a street / touring can then optimize it for that. Don`t try to mix specialized components from one application to another (putting ladder bars on a pro touring car or road race car spring rates on a street car etc.). Each of these configurations is very different from the others. FYI the street / touring car is the best multi tasker of these three examples, especially with a few adjustable / tune able components, it can be a very effective drag or auto cross car as well as a great driver.
During this step you select springs, shocks, sway bars, wheel / tires etc. It`s a lot to get all of these things in sync so do your research and ask lots of questions! Posting here was a great first step!

[BMR Sales]

are you trying to say that adding a few degrees caster will make a larger improvement than changing the camber curve, and dialing out bump steer?

No, I was replying to your earlier Post saying Caster didn't affect handling. There is a reason why Companies like ours make Tubular with additional Positive Caster.

Camber, Caster, Toe & BS all come into play in Handling! Driver Input too!

[pitts64]

Do yourself a favor and start with a Lee 14:1 box with a 30 lb valve along with a 12" or 13" steering wheel.. Fantastic!!!

[krom]

No, I was replying to your earlier Post saying Caster didn't affect handling. There is a reason why Companies like ours make Tubular with additional Positive Caster.

Camber, Caster, Toe & BS all come into play in Handling! Driver Input too!

If you re-read my post, I said that high $ a-arms only add a few degrees of caster. Never said that caster doesn't affect handling at all.
But since the guy is on a budget, spending a grand for a few degrees of caster, isn't exactly the best bang for the buck, nor will it suddenly turn the car into a canyon carver. For less money he can do tall ball joints, bushings, bump steer kit, a sway bar, and possibly shocks/springs.