Best aftermarket suspension kit for pro touring 1970 Challenger

[ledphoot]

I hear you, I am no purist and I know there are people who wholeheartedly believe I am ruining this Cuda.. Even I look at it and gee there are less than 1500 of these ever made. But I am building my car for me.. I hope to lay some spank on my buddies with modern Challengers, that's my goal. I think I can achieve, I surely will not get my @ss handed to me by them...

It's your car, do whatcha want.

[70 Challenger Lover]

I hear you, I am no purist and I know there are people who wholeheartedly believe I am ruining this Cuda.. Even I look at it and gee there are less than 1500 of these ever made. But I am building my car for me.. I hope to lay some spank on my buddies with modern Challengers, that's my goal. I think I can achieve, I surely will not get my @ss handed to me by them...

It's your car, do whatcha want.

I'll keep the RT original though!

[HP2]

Big improvement for the money is, IMO, the key phrase to it all.  Whats it cost in hard parts , time, and tuning? What are the benefits they provide for your specific application and intended driving? Are you happy with those results and costs?

Obviously link suspensions have several benefits over a leaf design;  they are slightly lighter, they are easier to change  spring rates in, they have hundreds of spring rates available to them, spring prices are cheap, they do allow each component to serve a single or limited number of functions so they can be a bit more specialized, they may take up less room, they may have improved geometry, they may have more adjustment, although not all do unless you get a competition style which has a different set of pros/cons comapred to a street unit.

On the flip side, a mopar leaf  is already a fairly well engineered package and much more than a few pieces of steel banded together and stuck under a car. Twist resistance, roll height, axle location, anti-squat, leaf bias, leaf rate, spring rate, load rate, thrust, toe are all factored into  the E body leaf layout and design. Higher durometer bushings, quality shocks, and a thrust alignment can go a long way to firming up the leaf suspension response and capability are a very reasonable cost point.

[70 Challenger Lover]

So do the rear link suspensions improve ride quality at all?

I am still welding up the rear metal now with new rails, trunk floor, quarters so now is the time to think about how I want it to end up. Everything was rusted out including the original suspension. If I stay with stock, I still have to buy all new original style components which isn't that much cheaper than a link type system. Depending of course on which company I get stuff from. If I go with a kit designed for ease of installation than the cost goes up. If I don't mind mocking up the stuff myself, there is quite a lot of savings to be had making the cost reasonable.

[HP2]

Ride quality is a very difficult thing to define as there is no universal standard of what it consists of. We can all agree on horsepower levels or elapsed times, Ride quality and Noise, Vibration, Harshness are much more nebulous.  Ultimately, ride quality is the combination of spring rate and shock control of the motion that aligns with your personal preference. The architecture to achieve that feel is somewhat inmaterial. For the last 100 years, a car can be suspended by leaf, coil, torsion, or air. That's it.

A street oriented 4 link designed for a mopar specific application that has all geometry laid out and ready for installation  is going to run almost $2k.  A generic cut to fit and weld it yourself kit is under $300, but you still have to purchase the coil over kit which will be any where from a few hundred to almost $2k, are responsible for the layout and geometric alignment of it all, welding it all in,  and then setting it up to the correct instant centers, spring rates, and shock control.  So maybe $600-800 on the cheap end, several thousand on the high end. Again, this all comes down to total improvement you want and budget for it; the total cost involved in hard parts, fabrication, set up time, install time, and tuning time. If you have plenty of time and are attentive to detail, you can take a fab route. If you prefer to spend the money and minimize the down time for fab and install, buy pre-fab.

By comparison, a good set of performance leafs will run $250-350, Shocks will run $100-1000, and bushings are under $50, shackles are $30, eye brackets are maybe $80-100, so may be $500 low end to a grand on the high end.