A Hot Rod's to Hell's "truck arm"/centerdrive kit for Chevelles is on e-bay 'till wednesday . I've read alot of threads about what to do with the stock rear suspension on the chevelle but I haven't found any threads on this set-up. Is it a good set-up for corner carving or is this all hype? If this subject has already been covered please point me in the right direction.

It's a huge leap forward compared to the factory converging 4-link but you could still do better (i.e. 3 link or decoupled torque arm)-- however you would have to piece either of those options together entirely on your own as currently there are no 3-link or DC-T/A kits.

Keep in mind there are some exhaust issues with the HTH kit-- namely you'll be sticking your mufflers under the floorpan under the driver's seat area and you'll be running either under the car dumps or out the side of the rocker panels before the rear tire. The arms and the massive panhard rod bracing do not leave room for out-the-back exhaust.

Also, from what I hear the screwjacks they supply for adjusting ride height really crash, bang, and rattle and cause a lot of noise inside the car.

Hopefully some other people will chime in (namly gchandler, since he used to work at HTH.)

Troy

I have no major complaints with my HTH setup. The only rattling I have comes from the heim joints on the panhard rod, but solid heim joints are going to be noisy no matter what. I've never had the car on a road course, have yet to get the driveline and steering system up to par for that...
Do a search, there's been alot of discussion about it and I know I've posted my thoughts on how it does on my own car quite a few times.

As Troy said, there are better configurations out there, but the truckarm configuration works well on these cars. In short, it's not all hype, it does perform. There are other options for the REALLY hardcore enthusiast though determined to turn an A-body into a road course car :)

Somehow my post showed up twice. :)

First, let it be know that I have not been employed at Hotrods to Hell in quite some time, I worked for him while earning my MBA. Undergraduate I studied Computer Science and engineering at USC. I still drop in of Steve when I have time, and he lets me use his shop to work on my cars from time to time.

I currently work for a video game company and run hotrodhomepage.com and driftlive.com in my free time. I have put over 100k on my '66 chevelle since I got it, about 80k with the HTH front setup and 30k with truckarm. The first 20k was on rebuilt stock suspension, then Hotchkis, then HTH.

I have driven a truckarmed car from Los Angeles to St. Louis and back in 6 days. Including a non-stop trip from Kansas, through Colorado back to Los Angeles. The run through the rockies at 3am in the morning was one of the most spectacular few hours of driving that I have yet to experiance. Enough background.

Now for the questions.

You can install the kit without the screw jacks. I would not recommend it as it is great to be able to set right height by simply opening the trunk and using a standard socket. I run the kit on both my cars and love it.

I simply placed some jute padding behind the rear seat, not only did it limit any heim noise that I had, it also eliminated all the wheel house noise. If you car is really noisy when you drive over loose gravel, I would recommend putting the jute behind the rear seat. I also made my rear package tray cover out of some stuff from b-quiet.com.

Be careful of ebay auctions. In the past some customer have resold their kits, after removing parts that were critical to the overall function of the setup. Basically they wanted to buy the design, without paying for a complete kit. The one who ends up holding the bill is the guy who gets the kit second hand. If you have already purchased the kit and it is not complete, give Steve a call and I am sure that he can help you out.

For exaust, I recently had a new exhaust put on my 64 chevelle that uses the small case flowmaster HushmasterII mufflers. I love the sound and they gave me a lot of space under the car. I personally ran a side exhaust long before I had truckarm, and I prefer the setup as exhaust piping does add weight to the car, not to mention the cool factor of blasting exhaust out the sides.

If you want to get more detail, feel free to email me.

Thanks for all the input. I didn't purchase the kit, I like to do a little research befor such a purchase and the two days between when I noticed the ad and the auction end-date just wasn't enough time. I'm sure the stock setup with the standard upgrades will do me just fine. I just figured if the price was right why not spend the money on a better system instead of just upgrading a faulted one.