Project SS!

[HAULN-SS]

Well, an update, but still no pics since I haven't actually done any work. I had a nice long phone chat with Marcus from scandc.com. He's the guy that wrote the book "How to make your muscle car handle" and is pretty much the suspension expert in the muscle car world. Here's his book:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Muscle-Handle-Performance/dp/1934709077/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401802828&sr=8-1&keywords=make+your+muscle+car+handle">http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Muscle- ... car+handle</a><!-- m -->

Anyway, I had seen him posting on some of the G-body forums, and gave him a call. Turns out he's a G-body guy and has a 1986 Monte Carlo as well. Long story short, I ended up ordering this kit he designed:

I am no suspension expert, but it basically sounded like the reason this is the best bang for the buck is because the stock suspension geometry doesn't allow for a negative camber alignment. Here's a little that Marcus had to say on the subject.

Raising the spindle raises the upper ball joint to a better location for better camber gain and helps raise the super lower roll center (which promotes lots of body roll). It also helps stabilize excessive lateral roll center migration (which in turn makes the car much more predictable). It raises the steering arms as well, in relation to the center link. This alters the bump steer. The trick is to use the right height to aid the suspension geometry while getting the steering geometry just right for correcting the factory bump steer (it works on this car because the outer tie rod ends need to go up relative to the center link. It doesn`t work on all cars). If we use too tall of a lower ball joint then we`d need to add a bump steer kit to move the outer tie rod end pickup points back down again. That`s okay but it`s more cost and complication. If we nail the right height (also the caster setting because caster alters steering arm height as well) then we don`t have to do any additional steering mods, it`s plug and play. This limits the height of the lower ball joint we can use though. This extra height is a help but it merely makes a very bad front end less bad. The next step is to use a taller upper ball joint as well. The upper has virtually no effect on bump steer (we compensate for what little is has) and it doesn`t effect the ride height of the car so we can go big. We designed the Xtall SevereDuty upper ball joints to do just that. The resulting geometry is now actually quite good even when compared to the best comparable brand new performance cars. You can see it, you can feel it. At this point we`ve reengineered the front suspension and steering to work correctly and the difference is fantastic. Once you have this solid foundation in place you can choose to either leave the rest of the car alone, tweak it just a little bit or go all out. The choice is yours but the results will be stacked in your favor.

Anyhow - he's a real nice guy, has loads of information, and I ordered his product which people seem to rave about. He sends alignment specs for 3 styles of driving with the kit. He also talked me out of going the coil over route for these cars as well saying that you can get just as good of a result with coil springs without having to worry about bottoming out because of the lack of travel (apparently G-body springs are about the shortest GM ever made).

Sooo - once I get the LCA off the car does anyone here have a press we can use to press out the old and in the new ball joints? The tops are bolt in so I'm not worried about those.