Hello all, I’ll have my chassis back soon and I want to upgrade the suspension but I also don’t want to loose that beautiful olds ride. I’m thinking about a stage 2 kit from QA1. Your comments would be appreciated. Thx.

 

Sorry, the Magic 8 Ball is off-line at the moment - year & model?
1972 442 based upon your previous threads?

Just looked it up - pricey! $4,739.32

You definitely need new front upper & lower control arms (appears the front UCA and LCA are tubular in the kit) - can't restore the original front UCA & LCA? Looks like a nice kit but pretty pricey & doesn't include the springs. I like the coil overs for both front & rear. I did an R&R on my suspension last winter but I reconditioned & used my OEM UCA & LCA.

Winter Project - '71 CS Suspension

 

Pick one. You are limited to what you can do within the factory suspension geometry. The ideal way to get a nice ride with upgraded handling it to design a suspension with a lot of travel and relatively soft springs. That's not possible without designing a brand new chassis, so that's not really an option. Typically sway bars will help suspension without hurting ride quality. Stiffer springs and shocks will definitely make for a harsher ride. Frankly, the 64-72 A-body cars have a poorly designed front suspension. Your priority should be correcting the camber curve, which means taller spindles and/or relocated upper control arm mounting points.

 

You can't have your cake and eat it too... Any of these mods will lose the soft Oldsmobile feel.

 

Imagine if some outfit has the audacity to charge $ 4739.00 !!!!! Do they really need the extra
32¢ ???? Better charge $ 4739.32.....right......

 

I have the QA1 suspension kit and coil over system on three of my cars. I did switch the spindles on all three cars to the ride tech tall spindle w/ 2” drop. Very few shims needed to get setup to 0 degrees.
-65 Cutlass
-65 Vista Cruiser
-70 Vista Cruiser (originally did suspension kit with factory springs and shocks, just finished coil over conversion this week).
You will not regret making the decision to go with the QA1 kit if you are looking to make your car handle. The coil over shocks have 10 different adjustments and stiffness can go from moderately stiff to very stiff.
I have also performed complete bushing replacement and suspension restoration on my 66 442 convertible and 70 442 W 30 convertible. Improvement over worn out bushings was substantial and the cars float down the road. Factory overhaul of the suspension did not correct any of the performance shortcomings of the original design.
I do think switching to either tall spindles or tall ball joints on factory arms and replace all the other worn out bushings will improve on the shortcomings of the original design. I have not done this yet 😊!

regards,
-ben

 

FIRST, you make plans to replace everything that's worn out--ball joints, tie rod ends, center link, idler arm, etc.

Tall steering knuckles, or tall upper ball joints make a definite improvement in handling with no change in ride comfort. The revised angle of the upper control arms reduces the distance between the roll center and the front center of gravity--therefore less body roll.

Tall lower ball joints lowers the vehicle, reducing center of gravity, which also helps reduce body roll in corners. But without firmer springs, you run the risk of bottoming-out.

A firmer, fast-ratio steering box will improve things greatly without changing the ride at all.

Pretty-much EVERYTHING else is going to compromise ride comfort. Next on the list would be fresh body-to-frame mounts, and then fresh control-arm bushings. Some amount of additional harshness, but not bad. A "performance" alignment with added positive caster and reduced positive camber should be considered mandatory.

After that, sway bars front and rear.

Springs and shocks will make the most difference in ride comfort, although tire size and construction can have a big effect, too.

Anything you do to change ride height means the headlights need to be aimed.