66 chevelle suspension help

[Robbie Dowdy]

Ive spent awhile searching but all the info i can realy find is 68-72 chevelle stuff. Im building a 66 chevelle for a guy and obviosly want it to handle and stop better. for the front, Ive been looking at the SC&C upper control arms with the Hal adjustable coilover setup. Ide like to put a tubular lower to finish off the look. Its going to have a steel headed big block in the front. Ive looked and seen ATS doesnt carry a spindle for these years. what do you guys suggest is a good combination of parts that will function well together. need a sway bar as well. plan is running a 17x9.5" rim up front. ide like to lower it about 2" in the front.

As far as rear, im lookin at the hotchkis kit. How well does this kit operate with all poly bushings? plan is to run around a 18x10" rim in the rear. ide like to go about 3" lower in the rear if possible. need shocks too. suggestions here would be great as well.

Not trying to pull 1g in this car but want something that will handle good in agressive driving. You guys know your stuff and thats why im asking you.

[Randy67]

The 68-72 stuff you found applies to the 64-67 as well. The earlier cars are slightly narrower but otherwise the same setup. I would talk to Mark at SC&C for more info. I presume once they work out the ATS spindles for the 68-72, they may work on our years as well. I would avoid the poly bushings in the back. You can search here for plenty of reading on using poly bushings in the rear and what problems they cause with bind. I'm building up a 67 El Camino myself. Good luck

[Marcus SC&C]

Our Street Comp packages all fit `64-`72 including the Street Comp AFX with the tall AFX spindles. BTW the new A body steering arms will be ready shortly. I finished testing with them a little while ago,the bumpsteer is quite good. They`re machined from 7075 T-6 and hard anodized,very trick!
The QA1 (HAL is no more) coilover setup does have some issues including high side loading on the shock and leakage problems. Unless you plan to make changes often I think you`d be better off with Eibach Pro springs and 16 way adj. Alston Vari Shocks,which are a big evolutionary step beyond the QA1s. Naturally I`m a fan of our adj. upper A arms. They`re the only ones on the market that offer full adjustability which lets you set the alignment to perfectly suit your car and it`s mods. rather than having to compromise. Also for the price of many other fixed arms you can get a whole Street Comp package and make really profound geometry improvements rather than just adding a little bit of + caster and looking cool (for that matter I think ours look a lot cooler too! ;) ). For lower arms,currently I`d say GW. They make a darn nice arm (although it`s fairly heavy) and they offer Del a lum bushings (which I recomend). If you`re not in a big hurry we should have new tubular lowers for A bodys from Spohn in a few months. Their arms are a very high quality,also available with delrin bushings. They`re also lighter and available in 4130 chromemoly for even lighter weight. Even in 4130 they`re still less expensive that the competition`s mild steel arms. They`ll look very similar to the G body version you can see on our site.
In the rear steer clear of any arms that have poly bushings on both ends! The hard bushings and rigid tubular arms produce non linear binding issues that can make the car twitchy and cause snap oversteer. I`ve been there and it`s no fun! My top choice there are Currie`s Currectrac arms with swiveling Johnny joints on the frame side. They weather resistant and greasable and rebuildable and they eliminate that non linear binding to a suprisingly large degree. They`re very beefy and they just plain work very well.
Be carefull not to drop the car too much in the rear. The rear roll center is already very high and lowering the car raises it more. Anything more than about 2" can put the RC higher than the CG which makes the normally inverted moment arm a proper pendulum and can cause some funky (highly technical term) driving characteristics. Mark SC&C

[gearbanger]

Marcus, I have lowered my 67 A-body to the point that the lower control arm is level and parallel to the frame rail. Is that too low to for good suspension geometry in the rear? Also do you recommend a rear sta-bar? I have one but don't reall know if I want to put it back on or not.

[Robbie Dowdy]

Marcus, thanks for the info. When i get to this point on the car..... ill be sure to give you a call and thanks for the suggestions.