SUSPENSION RESURRECTION

REVITALIZE YOUR A-BODY’S FRONT SUSPENSION WITH SOME SIMPLE UPGRADES FROM PERFORMANCE ONLINE.

Time eventually sneaks up on everything. The house needs painting, the tooth needs pulling, the warranty runs out, and Bill Gates wants to load yet an even newer operating system on your computer. When our Mopars were new, they were the handling class of Detroit, and all the buff books said as much. Now, your mom’s Toyota can pretty much outcorner and out-brake your beloved Mopar A-Body without breaking a sweat. Forget about the embarrassment of that—no, think about the danger of that. We live in an era where virtually every car on the road can run rings around your old Dart or Duster, at least when it comes to cornering and stopping. As much as we’ve espoused the virtues of tearing it up on a road course or an autocross, the simple fact is that what most of us want out of the handling from our classic Chryslers is a). not to be a danger to ourselves and others, and b). not having to constantly look a quartermile down the highway to spot trouble in time to avoid it. Take it from us, driving in constant collision-avoidance mode just isn’t that fun. We take modern handling and braking for granted in our daily drivers, and we simply want that level of safety and response from our classics. Sure, it would be nice to have Viper handling, but that’s not what this is about here. That in mind, we approached Performance Online (POL) with our dilemma. You see, our good buddy Christian Arriero works in our tech center all day fixing Camaros, classic trucks, and street rods for our other magazines (poor fella!), but he’s actually a Mopar guy. His slant-six ’74 Plymouth Duster is a sweet ride, but like we mentioned, it lacks all handling civility in traffic. Since POL has been working magic on classic muscle cars for decades (they have over 30 years of experience in drag racing and manufacturing), we decided to ask them for some advice on Christian’s Duster. The suspension doctors at POL put together a prescription for Christian’s Duster consisting of a complete front-end rebuild kit (including polyurethane bushings), an 11-inch disc brake upgrade (including new spindles), dual-diaphragm booster, tubular upper control arms, ball joints, steering linkage, idler arm, and a pair of Doetsch shocks. The whole package came to just over $1,500. We dug right in to bring your our rehab story (there’s a companion video you’ll want to check out too), and you’ll see the details on the brake system soon as well. Here’s how you can rehab you’re A-Body’s handling, starting now!

The first operation was to strip the old suspension off (spindles, control arms, strut rods, steering linkage). Christian cleaned and painted the items to be reused (lower control arms, strut rods, torsion bars), then rebuilt the lower control arms (shown). The three pieces at the bottom (original control arm pivot bolt, new bushing, new bushing shell) are combined to make the finished unit, shown above.

After cutting and chiseling out the old bushing and shell, use a press to insert the new bushing shell in the lower control arm. Grease the new POL polyurethane bushing, then press it into the shell.

We’re discarding the old upper control arms for a set of new tubular POL pieces, which must be assembled (the one on the left is finished). The pieces on the right (control arm, balljoint, urethane bushings, sleeves, retainers) are your starting point.

Using the supplied lube, grease the urethane bushings and tap them in with a mallet (two on each leg of the a-arm). Using more lube, tap in the POL aluminum sleeve (shown).

The billet aluminum retainers go on the inboard side of each leg, and must be squeezed in using a press or a vice.