Dodge Suspension information

[Pouria]

Hi friends;
Maybe this question has been answered many times before. I need complete information about the suspension of mopar vehicles specificely their weight distribution between the front and rear axels. Is there any website or online resource to provide this kind of information completely and reliable?

Yours - Pouria

[Ghoste]

That's a pretty broad question.  Are you talking about all Chrysler vehicles and powertrains?

[Mike DC]

 
An all-iron '68 426 Hemi Charger with an automatic and no A/C was listed as something like 59/41% nose-heavy in a 1968 car magazine article.  That's a worst case scenario but you get the idea.  The 426 Hemis were heavier than any of the other motors, but none of these cars are very balanced no matter what the options. 

There's virtually no (unsprung) heavy metal structures in the whole car farther back than the transmission area.  Behind the tranny crossmember it's literally just a flimsy back seat frame, a sheetmetal gas tank, a (compact) spare tire, and all the rear window glass.  Even the whole rear subframe-rail structure can be lifted by one person when the sheetmetal flooring isn't welded onto it.     

And the front suspension with power steering is quite a bit.  The front suspension was notoriously durable, but it carried a lot of weight in order to get that reputation.   The cast-iron power steering gearbox weighs about 40 pounds by itself.

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I'm a big "Dukes of Hazzard" fan. 

The TV stunt crew always had to add several hundred pounds of ballast to their Chargers that they used for huge jumps.  It's about 400-750 pounds depending on the specifics of the jump & car & ramp.  And those jump-cars already carry a couple hundred pounds of rollcage tubing welded in throughout the car's center cabin area.  (They want the car to end up about 50/50, or maybe 100-200 pounds heavier in the rear.)

[Pouria]

Thanks for the info. Well, let me know the story then. There is a very big argue here in Iran between the American car fans (like me) and those German car enthusiasts. The guys alwasy tell bad things about the handling and suspension of classic Americans cars and emphasize on awful brakes (using unboosted all drum brakes on many models is like a joke for them), simple and low performance suspension specially at the rear and bad weight distribution.

The thing is that we do not have much information resources to get useful data from and prove them that they are wrong. All we can say is the ride quality of a classic American sedan (on straight roads of course) that no other car can even come close. So I need you to give me hand and help me gather enough info to close their mouth. If 59/41 as Mike said is really the worst case I do believe I can stop them from telling nonesense. I just need evidence.

Pouria

[Mike DC]

That soulds like an interesting debate you're having. 

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The American musclecars were basically designed with the tires of the 1960s in mind, and those tires were VERY bad compared to modern radials.  It's not that Americans specifically used crap tires, it's just the difference in the decades of advancements between then and now.  The average 1960s bias-ply tires that everyone drove around on every day back then would frighten a lot of people who call themselves "driving enthusiasts" these days. 


The chassis designs of old musclecars only had to be as stiff as the amount of G-forces that the tires could put on them in a corner.  And all the spring & antisway bar rates were softer than modern cars as a result of the same thing, since the old tires couldn't hold onto the road enough to cause as much body lean as modern tires can. 

The suspension geometry of musclecars were designed specifically for the bias-ply tread design of the tires which need different settings than modern radials too.  (Less camber, etc.)

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If you compare the transmission gear ratios of old musclecars, you find that the 1st-gears are MUCH higher than modern sports cars.  In many cases, the muscle-era first gear is essentially like the 2nd-gear for a modern sports car's transmission.  This difference really takes a bite out of the acceleration times of the older cars. 

The difference was because of the less-grippy old tires too.  The older musclecars could already rip the tires to shreds with just the relatively high 1st gearing of the time.  It would have been a total waste of effort to give the cars the kinds of 3.00:1 (or sometimes even lower) 1st-gear ratios that a lot of modern transmissions have.   


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The weak brakes of the old cars are a little harder to forgive, although the weak-gripping tires still played some role in justifying it. 

The biggest issue was that the whole United States had just built its huge interstate highway system in those days (and it had about half the traffic that it currently does simply due to the lower populations & lower car ownership rates).  So the whole countryside was full of big, open, straight roads with little traffic compared to the present day.  That meant the average driver really didn't NEED great brakes and suspensions for handling purposes. 

The time that brakes were used most heavily was just predictable stop/go traffic at lower speeds, and fade-resistance doesn't become very relevant in that situation.  I'm not saying that this justifies the weak brakes of the time, just that it explains it to some extent.  Musclecars were really just variations on Detriot's existing midsize car models rather than purpose-built sports cars.  So a lot of the cost-cutting that was used for the average commuter vehicle was hitting even the most desirable musclecars to some extent too.   

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Old musclecars can REALLY hold their own once they've been compensated for some of the shortcomings of the 1960s.  They basically run with the best of sports cars in terms of technology with nothing more than some stiffening work and the addition of better wheels/tires/brakes.  The gap REALLY closes if you start stiffening the chassis of the old cars, and changing the transmission gearing, and redoing the suspension geometry . . .

The older musclecars weighed somewhere between 3400-4000 pounds depending on the model & options.  The low-optioned mid-1960s mustangs would have been less and the high-optioned early-1970s GM sedans would have been more, but you get the basic idea.    The sheetmetal of the average Mopar body panel was .040-.048" thick.  (That's a hell of a lot thicker than the average modern car.)

The only things on the old cars that really limit the performance of them now are the raw wieght of the steel-bodied cars, and the aerodynamics of the bodystyles.

[Pouria]

Dear Mike;
Thanks a lot for the complete and useful explanation, I really enjoyed reading it. Let me get back to my challenge with the German cars fans, now I have more weapons to fight

Yours - Pouria