85Frankencar said:
Hey Ben,
Looking good, glad you're getting some track time in, thanks for the updates. Quick question, which upper A-Arm set up did you like better, the speedtech or SPC? Have you had time with both? I'm looking to do the same thing with mine (autocross/road racing) and want to try to re-build my front end over the winter and was looking at the SPCs with taller ball joints, but saw you had speedtechs. Do the SPCs, being adjustable, make any difference? Thanks
I will start by saying what I'm about to say doesn't roll with the popular vote and may even get some folks frustrated with me. I say this only form my experience and am trying to be neutral as I can with my opinion.
I had the SPCs on there for about 2 years ish. My whole old set up is listed previously in this thread. I was happy with the setup, it performed well. I wanted more adjustability in ride height, spring rate, and shock dampening. One thing I dislike about working on suspensions is swapping front springs. I did mine 3 times and it still wasn't what I wanted. I saw coilovers as the next step. I had single adjustable Varishocks which were nice but they had less of a range than my Vikings, and the Vikings have individual compression and rebound adjustability. G bodies have a tendency to oversteer so having more adjustability to tune it out is a good thing.
About the SPC arms, When I bought mine I was shopping around and was a newbie converting from drag racing to Pro Touring. I asked around and everyone said get Marks book and give him a call. I read most of the book, which was very helpful. I'm artsie fartsie, I am the marketing and design manager for Speedtech and I do high end concept renderings on the side. I don't do engineering, that stuff hurts my brain. Marks book was easy even for me to read and even I "got" most of it. Now having done a ton of research, driving the car hard over the last 2 years and being directly involved in the industry through Speedtech I've learned a lot and I want to go back and read the book again, I think I'll get a lot more out of it the second time. When I called Mark he gave me a 2 hour education over the phone. It was great and although some of it went over my head and it was info overload by the time we got off I felt more educated and had ordered a stage 2 SPC kit.
The good... I love the way the SPC arms look. It's way impressive to others when you pop the hood, it looks like you're driving a race car on the street sort of thing. I liked the idea of "easy to change alignment specs" since I had planned on racing my car and thought everyone must change the alignment themselves all the time, hence adjustable arms. The arms came with street and race alignment specs from Mark. With regular local alignment shops I got the deer in the headlight look when I asked about aligning my car with those arms. Eventually I ended up at a shop that builds race cars. It took 2 guys and 2 hours to align it. One thing I might suggest, if you order the SPCs
get the $40 billet adjuster sleeve upgrade. I had a very limited budget so I got the knurled steel sleeves. They got scratched and buggered up during the alignment since the only tool you can use on them is a pipe wrench. About a year later I was in a different part of the country and the car had a pull to the right so I traveled about 45 minutes to have the alignment checked at another road race car shop. That guy said the alignment was great and was one of the best he'd seen done. Turns out I had a caliper that was dragging. So, if you have someone that knows what they are doing the SPC's hold the alignment well. Overall, the complete combination performed well in all situations.
The not as good... I drive "spirited " when the road allows and autocross the car as often as I can. During the 2 years I had the set up I never had the alignment changed Honestly I'm not sure I would ever have it changed unless I was serious about competing with Kyle Tucker, Brian Hobaugh, Brian Finch or Mary Pozzi if that makes sense. I didn't see the advantage of the SPCs over a solid arm
unless you are very serious about racing, (read as this aint no street car anymore) and will be adjusting the alignment for different regularly and often attended race venues and/ or having you're own portable alignment equipment to make track side adjustments to dial the car in at a the race. If you have the experience of tuning race cars and know what you're doing and why, this may delete 10ths of a second off your time and may give you an advantage over the next closest guy or two. On the other hand (and may I suggest more importantly) becoming a better driver and more familiar with the track run after run could shave potentially several full seconds off your time no matter what suspension you have.
Are they a bad product? No. If adjustable arms were the
best way to set up a pro touring car everyone would make them for each of the popular cars. Speedtech, DSE, Hotchkis, Ridetech, etc. all use solid arms to get the same job done. Like I said, there are many ways to accomplish the same thing. There are probably a certain group of individuals with the necessary equipment that will be able to take full advantage of an adjustable arm. SPC arms are able to adjust in a more precise manner than using shims and doing the same thing with solid arms. If you buy the SPCs and without purchasing track side alignment equip want 2 basic alignment settings, one for street and one for race, (which is what was on the alignment spec sheets I got with both sets of arms), just have the alignment guy set up the adjustable arms with the street setting and then use shims to set the race setting. Then when you get to the track you slip in the shims and off you go. But that sort of defeats the purpose of adjustable arms, and you can do the same thing with solid arms. To be fair there may be other advantages to the SPC design other than the adjustability, I simply don't remember all the features and benefits of them. I think most high end control arms have been engineered to increase performance through geometry settings. By all means, if you're shopping for arms, please steer clear of cheap off shore imitations. If they're cheaper priced than the average decent well known arm, they're likely just plain cheap and a bad idea for a performance vehicle.
For info's sake, Speedtech arms have extra caster built into them in both the uppers and lowers. G bodies like extra positive caster. Depending on ride height, typically lowered cars with solid arms can get the same extra camber gain that you can have adjusted into an SPC arm. With 1/2" tall upper and lower ball joints and a total of 3" of ride height drop from where the car was stock
when I bought it, my Speedtech arms had close to -1* of camber out of the box. For an average street driver I'd suggest this is on the aggressive side and stock height ball joints might be a better starting point and/or don't lower it as much as mine. Speedtech arms also have two different settings built onto the stainless billet cross shafts so you essentially have two different starting points for the camber part of the alignment. There are a lot of other nice features I see in Speedtech products. Feel free to ask or if the the moderators prefer, email me at
[email protected] if you have specific questions.
I finished the car's suspension swap on a Friday evening, drove it home from the shop, made a quick compression setting change based on the ride home, and then went racing the next morning. Over 10 runs at the car's shake down race I dropped 3 seconds just by playing with shock compression, and matched the times I was getting with what I think had my old set up maxed out at. I'd Imagine with the old set up I could have made minute changes to the SPC arms to try to make the car quicker, much like playing with jets at the drag track, but again I don't think it would have made major differences. With the new setup I still have a lot of adjusting room to play with through the rear lower control arm placements, the shock settings and rear sway bar settings. Once I get the rest of the suspension dialed in, I think with the current set up I will be able to drive the car faster through the course than before. I will readdress the alignment if necessary, but at that point I believe it will only be to to find those extra 1/10th of a second increases.
I've said this before and I'll say it again and again until the Pro Touring mafia gives me a pair of concrete shoes for Christmas. All too often in life we think we have to have what the next guy does and we play follow the leader in what seems to be popular, often without asking why. I see this
a lot all over the pro-touring and G body worlds and I think it can easily get out of hand. In the long run you may be chasing a path that won't give you the results you could have had with better research and trial and error
with your own individual car.
This is all my opinion and is based on my experience with my driving style with my car. Take it along with other people's opinions and make a good educated decision for what applies to your individual needs and wants. That's as fair to everyone involved as I can be.
