Hello everybody! Bill and Charles here from QA1.
Let's say you're thinking about doing some suspension upgrades but you don't
necessarily know where to start. We're going to road map it for you.
Scenario is maybe you just bought yourself a muscle car it's bone stock and you don't want it
to handle and drive like an old bone stock muscle car what would you say would be kind of step
number one for for improving? One of the first things that you're going to be able to feel right
away is shocks. And it all depends on whether or not you're if you're thinking about you know
lowering your car a little bit or you know changing your ride height some. We have our
Stocker Star shocks that are going to be a direct bolt in but then they're adjustable and then you
can change on how it rides whether it's firmer or softer and you basically are going to make a great
improvement that you're going to feel right away. And if and if you do want to change ride height?
Then you can go with our Pro Coil which then you have multiple spring rates to choose
and you also have the adjustable ride height via the shock. So the shocks themselves are the same
between a non-threaded body and a threaded body it's just whether or not they're ride
height adjustable. Yep and this one allows you to adjust the ride height with multiple spring rates.
And that is you know if you're going to continue on the upgrading path the coil-overs are forward
compatible with with later parts that we'll get into next. These will work with the factory
you know lower control arms and they also work with our our you know our tubular control arms.
Okay so so now you've you've done shocks you've gotten that out of the way the next thing is what?
Probably the next you know the next level up is a sway bar. Especially if your car doesn't have
a sway bar already I mean that's going to make a huge improvement on the amount that your car
leans in and out of the corners and you know there was a lot of the factory ones that even though it
had a factory sway bar they were pretty tiny and they didn't really offer a lot of sway control.
And with our tubular sway bars they definitely will make that you know your car stay a lot more
level and planted through the corners. Yeah and you'll notice it. It's they're a really
easy install they just replace the factory parts. Yeah. Yeah they bolt up basically in the exact
same as the factory ones would have and they use a lot of hardware that's all very similar to
the factory sway bars too. And they'll they will work with their without backwards compatible with
factory pieces. Oh yes. Yep. So you can do a set of sway bars without having to always have
you know everything else to support it. Oh year I mean you could bolt in just one of our
sway bars if you wanted to and not have any of our other components you know. You've got this
500 horsepower engine and all it does is roast tires or give you a violent wheel hop you know
so what would what would you do for that? Well one of the one of the best things you could do is
just take those old rusty worn out rear trailing arms and throw them right in the scrap pile.
Because I mean one those rubber bushings are super soft you know they're all cracked up they
they just they're not helping your suspension one bit. They never got replaced even when
those cars were like regular dailies. Nobody's ever replaced theirs why would you do that?
And then and then and then you also have these stamped steel
housings that there's a lot of flex there and that flex yeah and that flex is detrimental to your
you know to traction. That's loss of control. Oh yes exactly and so with tubular style trailing
arms you have polyurethane bushings which you know eliminate all that flex and then plus the tubular
steel eliminates all of that flex as well. And they're freshly painted so you don't have to put
rusty junk back on or you know spend all your time sandblasting and painting and all that.
And we also have upper upper trailing arms that are adjustable for those guys that want
to lower the ride height a bunch and then get all that you know get their driveline
and everything all tuned back in. Okay so we've done shocks, coil-overs, sway bars, trailing arms,
and up to this point we haven't done anything to change any geometry specs. Your factory
you know control arms in the front of the car are you know only allow so much you know
change in your alignment. So we've so we've maximized what our tire contact patch can do
with the factory alignments. Yes. Up till this point. Well now we want to address the actual
front end alignment of the car and the geometry of that. And you'll hear geometry what that really
means is you know what are the alignment specs that you can expect to achieve. Factory stuff was
really low it was you know zero to three degrees of caster which you know think about caster like
a caster wheel on a shopping cart if you get one that's in uh positive caster that's where you get
the wobbly wheel that drives you nuts. Yeah and the car and the car just wants to kind of just
slowly wander all over the road. The less caster you have the more it has tendency to do that. Yeah
so what does a set of tubular control arms do for you? Well one of the biggest things
it's going to do is it's going to you know you're going to totally change up your front suspension
geometry. So that it's more suited to modern day like radial tires and you know wider tires
and then because what it's going to do is it's going to give you more negative camber which keeps
your your tires contact patch in the corners. You know keeps it flatter gives you more traction and
then it's also going to increase your caster which is going to give you more of that straight line
stability and then it's also going to help with your turn in you know your traction on that you
know you're turn-in on turns. You're going to feel better feedback through the steering wheel. Oh
yeah. It's not going to feel nearly you know the old cars were really vague in the steering wheel.
So you get some you get some you know five to seven degrees of caster in there now all of a
sudden you go into a corner and you can feel it. You're gonna have much more road feel you're gonna
be able you're gonna be able to basically feel that point when your tires actually start to
lose grip a lot of times. And you're gonna be able to compensate for that and you're gonna
be able to push your car even harder through the through the turns than what you ever could before.
So everything up till the point of control arms is essentially maximizing your tire performance
with the factory alignment specs. You go to a set of control arms well now you're changing
your entire contact patch area essentially and you're making it now you're raising the bar.
Yeah and you're you're making the contact patch
more you know flatter with the road at all points of the suspension travel and it's allowing you
know your tires to maintain traction. It's keeping your tires from rolling over and
breaking that traction loose and letting the car slide. So this stuff is all direct bolt-on stuff
you can do it on jack stands in your garage and everything from the very beginning stages
is compatible with everything through the very end so you're not having to double up on parts you've
already bought. If you have any questions you can get a hold of us on the tech lines
check out our website we've got a lot of great tech articles that go a little bit
more in depth in some of these components and what they're actually doing and go drive it.