Suspension setup

[custom442]

What cross weight are you going to run with your set up?

To tell you the truth I doubt I'll go this far into it. I'll switch out sway bars (or make my own) to deal with oversteer/understeer. I mean, I'll move the battery to the rear pass. side of trunk and lighten up the front of the car some, but nothing radical enough to purposefully preload or move large components around to help with weight bias. After all, it is a low budget street car

I will however, calculate roll force distribution in some sort of effort to find a medium between traction and cornering force... I could change some of these ideas after I have the weights on all 4 points of the car and begin plugging in numbers

 

[custom442]

One question-Why would you want to lower the tire pressure? When I autocrossed regularly, I found best cornering to be around 40-45 psi front, and 35-40 psi rear, depending on the car. All were American cars, '67 Chevelle, '73 442, '77 Camaro & '79 Corvette. Granted, yesterday's cars were heavier, but anything less than 35 psi in a front tire might have you cornering on the sidewall.

Well I'm not about to go measuring tire temperatures after a run on the skidpad but I'll just play it by ear. They'll be 50 series tires so they should be fine rubbing a little sidewall, because of the changes in caster/camber/toe I'll need to take a little pressure off the smaller patch of tire on the road at all times. = lower psi...at least that's what I think. In the real world it might be different

Also, If you're really getting serious about cornering, look into one of the kits that use the taller B-body spindles. You'll minimize or eliminate camber gain in roll, a big problem with most stock arm/spindle setups. When I autocrossed regularly, we would drive to the course, then insert 3/8' shim packs in the upper arms once at the track, to change our camber, then take 'em back out to drive home.

I was thinking of changing the camber (and maybe toe) for a just the drive to the track and back, but it'll all depend on the tread life. If I make a few trips where it's all set up and the tread looks grim, then I'll have to change to something like this. good idea by the way

That's also one of the reasons I want to shove 255's in front, so I can rotate them and gain a few extra miles out of em

 

[billyjack]

billy....if you started out with 40-45 lbs in the front tires what was the pressure after your run and were your tires radials or bias ply?

Most of the events I ran were short parking-lot or kart courses, so tire pressure never changed much. We would mark our sidewalls with a tire crayon, and adjust pressure high enough to keep the shoulders of the tire from rolling under. I ran both radials and bias-ply tires. Hoosier used to make a tire for autocrossing that was a bias ply. It had much smoother breakaway and recovery than a radial, which suited our larger cars. When you ran a course with very tight corners, you needed to get sideways a lot to get a big car around. If the course designer of the event was a "small car" fan, he'd keep the corners really tight to negate the horsepower advantage of our V-8s.

Bill

 

[darthvaderolds]

Gottis are the best looking aftermarket rim on a G Body Cutlass in IMO...just a bad *ss rim

 

[86Cutlass383SR]

http://jeffd.50megs.com/Moog_Spring_Page.htm

I ran the 5662 springs in my 84 Cutlass and also the 36mm IROC front swaybar. It didn't seem overly stiff to me. I was also using the Global West Del-A-Lum bushings which take away alot of the binding on the a-arms. I tried the poly's and didn't like them. Too stiff.

The 6377 can be cut and I'd use an f-body isolator on the top of the spring. I used the open coil f-body rear coils on mt Cutlass.

I'm putting the 5662's back in my car (just installed this evening as a matter of fact) and I was also looking to run the same 6377 rear coils, too.

 

[custom442]

Thanks for the updates and tips guys! The suspension/wheels are being put off for a while (thought I could get to it in a few months) but I've got to save money for my damn truck transmission :x