Has anyone been using the Global West Suspension setups? As in the front upper/lower control arms and the rear lower control arms, also the springs and shocks. The company talks about their Negative Roll system. They say that a rear sway bar is not needed with their system. Do the polyurethane bushings in the Hotchkis system bind the rear end for a street performance car thus making a rougher ride? Any opionions as to how this system would compare with the Hotchkis TVS system would be appreciated. I am running wider tires in the rear than the front. Would front to rear tire width differences impact which system to go with? Does the Hotchkis system tend to oversteer? Thanks for the help.
JD

As far as the front, my experience has only been with Global West. I have seen Hotchkis upper arms, and while nice, they are nowhere near as nicely made or as "beefy" as the GW pieces. GW's Delalum bushings are also smoother than the polyurethane bushings Hotchkis uses. Hotchkis also has their "droop limiter" as an option, which isn't a great idea, as without a droop-stop you will be stressing your balljoints if you jack the car up and let the front suspension "hang." The GW upper arms have the droop stop built in.

GW's lower arms are nice, but not necessary. The best thing about them is that you don't have to machine the balljoints to fit as you do with stock arms and B-body spindles. They also likely won't crack (as the stock arms occasionally do out by the balljoint.)

As far as the rear suspension, many moons ago I tried a full Hotchkis setup (4 boxed arms with poly bushings.) I removed it and sold it in a week. VERY choppy ride and unpredictable handling, especially over bumps. The factory converging 4-link rear needs some flexibility in the arms and bushings to move smoothly, and with 4 boxed arms and rigid poly bushings (which don't allow twist) there is no longer any appreciable give in the links and the entire rear suspension binds when you try to move it. The binding makes for very unpredictable behavior since the suspension will never react the same way over each bump.

I now run Global West TBC-4 lowers with Edelbrock upper arms and fresh rubber bushings in the top of the rear-end. The GW lowers have a spherical bearing at the frame end which allows torsional movement, as do the Edelbrock uppers at the frame side, and the rubber bushings on the rear end provide a bit of vibration dampening and also allows a bit more flex. It rides very smooth and handles very predictably, even over bumps in hard turns. If you do not have a pinion angle problem the GW lowers also work extremely well with stock upper arms with fresh rubber bushings in them. I only run the Edelbrocks because I needed to adjust my pinion angle after doing my tranny swap.

Troy

Thank you for the reply Troy. Sounds to me the "binding" of the rear axle can be a problem. I assume with the spherical bushing in the GW lower arms the axle can flex in a good way thus the rear sway bar is not needed when grouped the the correct "negative roll" front A-arms. I saw you also had them in the Edelbrock rear uppers as well. What front and rear shocks have you found that work best in this GW setup? Are the adjustable worth considering?
JD

JD,

I'm running Edelbrock IAS shocks. I was running Koni's prevoiusly and while they were awesome in turns, their straight-line ride was a bit choppy. The Edelbrocks give up a little in the turns compared to the Koni's (but are still quite good) and are a LOT smoother over bumps. They're a great compromise comfort/handling shock in my experience; they're firm when cruising but still take big bumps well, and are firm enough for good control in a hard corner.

As far as the rear arms, the spherical joints in the GW arms allow them to rotate, which alleviates a lot of the binding. With the springs out of my rear end and the shocks off, you can move the axle up and down by hand without much effort. You can't do that with either the stock setup or with boxed arms and poly bushings everywhere, things just don't want to move without a lot of force!

If you don't have a pinion angle problem, I would just run the Global West lowers and stock "U-section" uppers with fresh rubber bushings on the upper arms. I noticed almost no difference in the way the rear end feels when I changed from the stock uppers to the Edelbrock uppers; I only changed because I needed to adjust my pinion angle.

Troy