Will I notice a 60' difference when changing 130K shocks to just heavy duty shocks?

Addicted2boost

SUCK, SQUISH, BANG, BLOW
Joined
May 24, 2001
As far as I can tell the shocks and springs are original. They are kinda rusty and black. The springs are chincy so I'm sure they are original. I want to 60' better beacuse I have the hp to do it with. Semi bald Nitto's to boot. :D I want to change the rear springs for now and replace the shocks all around. Will just heavy duty shocks be better? This is a 95% street driven car and want to remain that way. I'm not really wanting 90/10 shocks. Any ideas what rear springs to get and where from?
 
As you can tell by my combo, my car can REALLY mph well but the ET sucks. No wheel spin on launches. Maybe 3-4#'s boost launch. I will get 27 or 28" slicks in February.
 
Whether or not your 60's get quicker is dependant on how bad the car launches right now and what is the limiting factor.
HD rear shocks and springs are good and a 70/30 will be good for the fronts or some adjustable front shocks.

ks;)
 
Originally posted by Addicted2boost
As far as I can tell the shocks and springs are original. They are kinda rusty and black. The springs are chincy so I'm sure they are original. I want to 60' better beacuse I have the hp to do it with. Semi bald Nitto's to boot. :D I want to change the rear springs for now and replace the shocks all around. Will just heavy duty shocks be better? This is a 95% street driven car and want to remain that way. I'm not really wanting 90/10 shocks. Any ideas what rear springs to get and where from?

Check out www.p-s-t.com They carry the KYB's for 119.00 a set.
Coil springs are priced from 95.00 & up.
 
Casey, i run Competition Engineering 3 way adjustable shocks and dual airbags in the rear springs. The fronts are set a 80/20 and the rears at 60/40 and i pulled a 1.69 with the stock D5 converter and 26x10s....i might change the shocks to 90/10 and 50/50 and see if i can do better. Driviability is great w/the shocks.
 
KEVINS...can you tell me exactly what you did to get your car to pull a 1.61 w/a D5 converter? Ive been to yer website and just got through printing out about 15 pages worth of reading but i figured id ask you. Include mods and how you set them up etc.
Suspension ONLY.
 
Well, I don't have much to tell. The car came with lowering springs but I don't know how far it is lowered. I'd say about 1.5"..??? This helps because the car will usually move forward first then start to raise the front end but not very high. This saves time. It also keeps the car from getting all twisted on the starting line when powerbraking that much boost.
The front shocks are very worn out stockers or some type of replacements.. The rears seem to be the same except they are in decent shape. Then I run air bags, air psi: 25 DS and 36 PS. That's it.
Overall the suspension is pretty stiff except the worn out front shocks allow the front to raise quicker with the lowering springs. All sway bars are still on the car. Factory bushings, etc.
I think there are a few reasons why it 60's well but they are not great reasons:

1. Because I powerbrake it to 15psi of boost when I launch. This is the main reason.
2. My car came with a POS turbo from an International Deisel Tractor (that I didn't know about) and my car just would not run correctly under "normal" boost conditions and normal fuel pressures. So I increased boost to around 26+psi until it ran a "normal" ET. So it would "spike" to 26psi almost instantly and this is what got it through the 60' in a decent amount of time.

Now I have a stock turbo and I only ran it once down the track but I had no idea where the boost was set at (grainger valve problems) but I did launch it at 15psi but the car felt VERY lazy. It only went 1.7's) See page 3 of my Diary of a GN for complete story.
I Know it will duplicate the 1.60's once I get everything straightened out (15psi launches and around 22-23psi max boost) and it will be because of the high boost launches.

Probably not the answers you were looking for but that's all of them.

I have 2 other friends with original suspension cars w/ air bags, that leave with high boost 15psi+ and also run 1.5's - 1.60's. Concentrate on high boost launches if you don't mind the extra abuse.

HTH's
ks:confused:
 
I think i may have it figured out.....are your 26x10s screwed down to the rim? do you run tubes? Mine are moving on me and thats definitely taking away something from my 60 ft.
 
well then ill bet thats it since i run no tubes and theyre not screwed down. Whats the big deal with tubes though....i understand the screws but do tubes help as well?
 
Tubes can do 2 things. 1. keep the air from leaking out. 2. add a little more stiffness to the sidewall of the tire so it doesn't flex so much.
If you're really into suspensions then you can adjust the "hit" of the tire onto the concrete by adding or removing the tubes. I prefer to leave them in but most people will never know the difference. The tubes will transfer the energy to the concrete a bit better.

hth's
ks:)
 
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