1967 Buick Grand Sport 400 - Improve Your Car's Ride And Handling

Here's a comparison of the stock Buick front suspension goodies and the Air Ride replacements. The tubular Strong Arms are fabricated from mild steel and feature polyurethane bushings and heavy-duty ball joints. When measured, the new parts are nearly twice as resistant to load flex than the stock stampings, but weigh about the same.

It is crucial to ensure that the Shockwave air springs can't come into contact with the trimmed edges of the frame pockets. If you can't slide a finger between the rubber bladder and the nearest bit of metal, they're too close. A little tweaking of the trimmed edge with a wrench finished the job.

The upper control arm, air spring, and lower control arm bolted in place without drama. We love that there's no hassling with a coil spring compressor. If the installation team looks familiar, that's because both Rodney (shown) and Brad are regulars on the hit TV show Overhaulin'. If there's an Air Ride Technologies suspension added to the subject vehicle, these guys show up to install it.

The kit includes custom forged G-Force spindles that are 2 inches taller and feature a 2-inch drop. The scheme ensures a proper camber pattern under a wide range of ride height settings so the tire contact patch remains maximized. The greasy stock spindle went into the scrap bin.

With the front suspension assembled, the spindle gets dropped 3 inches (half of the total travel) from its fully compressed position. A digital angle finder was then mounted to the brake rotor so camber and caster settings could be made. On power-steering A-bodies like this Buick, Rod likes 3 to 5 degrees of positive caster,1/2 to 1 degree of negative camber, and 1/16 to 1/8 inch of toe-in. On manual-steer A-bodies, Rod sets caster at 0 degrees to decrease low-speed steering effort. All these settings must be done by a competent alignment shop on modern equipment. If you're lacking, it is OK to temporarily set it all to zero-using the digital angle finder and with the suspension dropped 3 inches-then drive the car to a good alignment shop ASAP for adjustment. Resist temptation to drive anywhere else; misalignment can wreck the front rubber in a jiffy.

The Street Challenge kit includes a tubular 11/4-inch Muscle Bar front sway bar with trick Posi-Link end links. Compared with the stock-type rubber-bushed end link (left), the C6 Corvette-inspired Posi-Link features encased ball joints on each end and is virtually solid. The result is that the roll bar reacts instantly to body roll. By contrast, rubber-bushed end links compress momentarily and delay the onset of roll bar influence. Great for boulevard ride, bad for maximum suspension performance.