The bolt can come right out and there can still be rust damage on either the frame or body that would require welding repairs.
Chassis Stiffening
- Thread starter rubio9800
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The bolt can come right out and there can still be rust damage on either the frame or body that would require welding repairs.
Also, there are downsides to poly/solid body mounts.
Sharp jarring suspension travel becomes rough - think of potholes feeling like it'll jar your fillings loose.
If you live in a cold environment, especially with poly, there's lots and lots of squeaking while you drive. It can be like dozens of mice moved in for a family reunion and really get on your nerves while you drive down the road.
If you want to firm up handling there's other avenues that each add a little something with varied cost depending where you live and your used part access:
1) the old tried and true larger hollow f body front sway bar and adding a rear sway bar if you lack one.
2) if you weld you can box the rear control arms, or if funds aren't at issue go with aftermarket rear arms.
3) if you increase rim size and decrease sidewall on the tires the car will feel stiffer because sidewall flex will go down decreasing the side to side feel, and also slightly lower the floating feel on vertical movement.
4) changing out your shocks can stiffen things up and reduce that floating feel even more, but without needing to deal with the more dangerous coil spring compression.
5) change out the coil springs as well, even just a stock replacement will firm things up compared to the near 40 year old 100-200k units on there now. As a short term alternative to replacing the coil springs, if they are fatigued you can use the old school mechanic trick of adding rubber spacers between a couple of the coils so they don't bounce/float as easily. It was a cheap solution for those who couldn't afford a full replacement at the time.
6) add the missing body/chassis braces. To give each car line its unique driving feel gm engineers added/removed different braces and even in some cases like the fabled GnX added extra body bushings to cars. Look up the respective grand prix, cutlass, monte Carlo braces that tie together cowl to fender, fender to rad support, and crossmember to frame horn or frame horn to frame horn locations. All cheaply sourced via pull a part or junkyard. Also you can make homemade braces for behind the back seat out of crimped conduit.
None of those have the invasiveness of body bushing swaps, they take less time, and are easily reversible if you decide you want to tweak things to roll back the other direction.
Sharp jarring suspension travel becomes rough - think of potholes feeling like it'll jar your fillings loose.
If you live in a cold environment, especially with poly, there's lots and lots of squeaking while you drive. It can be like dozens of mice moved in for a family reunion and really get on your nerves while you drive down the road.
If you want to firm up handling there's other avenues that each add a little something with varied cost depending where you live and your used part access:
1) the old tried and true larger hollow f body front sway bar and adding a rear sway bar if you lack one.
2) if you weld you can box the rear control arms, or if funds aren't at issue go with aftermarket rear arms.
3) if you increase rim size and decrease sidewall on the tires the car will feel stiffer because sidewall flex will go down decreasing the side to side feel, and also slightly lower the floating feel on vertical movement.
4) changing out your shocks can stiffen things up and reduce that floating feel even more, but without needing to deal with the more dangerous coil spring compression.
5) change out the coil springs as well, even just a stock replacement will firm things up compared to the near 40 year old 100-200k units on there now. As a short term alternative to replacing the coil springs, if they are fatigued you can use the old school mechanic trick of adding rubber spacers between a couple of the coils so they don't bounce/float as easily. It was a cheap solution for those who couldn't afford a full replacement at the time.
6) add the missing body/chassis braces. To give each car line its unique driving feel gm engineers added/removed different braces and even in some cases like the fabled GnX added extra body bushings to cars. Look up the respective grand prix, cutlass, monte Carlo braces that tie together cowl to fender, fender to rad support, and crossmember to frame horn or frame horn to frame horn locations. All cheaply sourced via pull a part or junkyard. Also you can make homemade braces for behind the back seat out of crimped conduit.
None of those have the invasiveness of body bushing swaps, they take less time, and are easily reversible if you decide you want to tweak things to roll back the other direction.
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thanks for the extensive list , i got my research cut out. i will start wit front/rear sway bars
i appreciate the feedback, i want to start wit easy bolt on stuff first as a noob.
Baby steps lol.
With a few feedbacks here to my suggestion I didn't realize it was such sacrilege to touch your mushy rubber body bushings. Ohwell
I’m not sure the factory rubber mounts are even still available. When I checked, some guys were using select Camaro mounts due to lack of availability. Energy Suspension makes a nice polyurethane kit which I installed on my car. The Energy Suspension mounts are likely cheaper than sourcing all the factory rubber mounts. The ride isn’t too harsh and they don’t make any squeaking noises. If your body mounts have never been changed they need to be replaced anyway.
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