i'm looking for ways to improve the handling. what are some good upgrades out there. has anyone tried a 4 link rear, or tubular control arms?
thanks

Its a big question.

What are the plans for the car? Pro-touring.com will give you days worth of reading the subject.

There are a ton of ways to improve the suspension without spending all your retirement money.

no pro touring. just around town or about an hour to Daytona. when i take a corner hard, one of the back wheels feels like it's coming off the ground. front end feels like it's pushing.

I have tubular front control arms. The biggest advantage I saw was that the factory control arms would not allow for enough adjustments to benefit radial tires. Not enough either caster or camber - I can't remember.

I did not drive the car a whole lot before taking it apart, so I can't comment on the direct benefits of the change.

If you really want to look into upgrading the suspension of an FGF, suggest you look here:

Pozzi Racing 1st Gen Camaro Suspensions

My Bird corners so very flat on the street there is no boat like handling anywhere. Firm and stable, It's not a competition car, but it can hang with the newer iron on the streets in a corner. This is in a stock restored car with sound deadener, AC, 400/461 and a wide ratio Muncie.

Front suspension: Eibach dropped springs, KYB GAs adjust shocks, 1" front sway bar, 20 year old poly bushings, subrfame conectors, Poly sub-frame bushings. Rear Suspension: '81 WS6 Trans am rear springs with poly bushings and KYB shocks. Stock control arms. Will be upgrading to a fast ratio steering box eventually, big improvement. Most of the parts came from my Vintage racing Firebird back in the day. I would not hesitate taking my present car to an open track day at Sebring if I could.

Also If I could, I would do the Guldstrand mod for the upper control arm, I did that on my previous Bird and the additional castor made a difference for the steering to return to center at track speeds. I have 1 degree negative camber and as much Castor as I can get into the fronts with the shims.

You could spend a lot more money and will not be much better than what I have done for a street car. Mine has no real "Bling" factor, it really just looks stock, but performs well. Less than $1,000 for everything.

For a race car/track car, contact HO428 and his vintage racing suspension specs. His race car corners flat at 140 plus mph on Turn 17 at Sebring, no small feat!

Good luck!

Does your car have a properly installed, unbroken, front sway bar? A missing or broken sway bar or link will lift an inside rear tire all day long while the outside front corner mashes hard into the ground....

Really need a $$$ budget to make any feeble attempt to answer your opening question. Are you looking to drop $500 into this project, or $10,000+? Or somewhere in-between? And we'd very much need detailed info on what your current setup is, and the present condition/age of ALL your suspension and chassis parts...particularly bushings.

I frankly found a drastic improvement...surprisingly flat cornerning...after simply replacing all my bushings with polyurethanes, upgrading to a heavy duty aftermarket front swaybar and links, and replacing all my tie rods, ball joints, and steering/pitman arms with factory-style MOOG stuff from local auto parts store. I then went for a test-drive and it was absolutely night and day comparing before/after the rebuild.

That made everything tight and new, with some additional improvement over stock provided with the fat swaybar and poly bushings.

The other big wild card is the condition/age of your subframe/body bushings. If original, they desperately need replacement and they have a HUGE impact on handling. This is often cheap and reasonably easy to do, depending on your rust situation. If rust-enlarged holes are found in the process or your cage nuts spin and the bolts don't come out (both very common), this is going to be the true root of your problem, and no amount of aftermarket bolt-ons will stop your entire chassis from flexing and destroying your handling...in which case you need to prepare yourself for the beginning of a subframe-off resto to fix it properly. After confirming the holes are properly sized, your options for these subframe bushings are factory rubber, poly, and solid. And subframe connectors will offer yet another drastic improvement to these cars, costing anywhere between a reasonable $150-ish for bolt-ons and full blown multi-thousand-dollar (due to labor intensive if you don't fab and weld yourself) floor-integrated weld-ins.

After doing my above-mentioned mild front end upgrade and repair, it later led me to a full restoration, and I now have solid body bushings, floor-integrated weld-in connectors, poly everything-else, etc. Car is a rock...I couldn't get it to lean into a turn even if I wanted to anymore. And it also dialed a great deal of the comfort out of my ride. So beware of trade-offs. I intend to do some occasional rally road-course racing and such, but haven't yet. Comfort/smooth ride is not really a major concern for me. Might be for you. Makes a huge difference in what you might decide to do. As one very mild example, many have installed poly bushings only to find they hate them...others swear there is nothing better.

But for all we know, you might simply have a wear and tear problem, or an improper alignment, and simply fixing these issues might satisfy you quite swimmingly, depending on your perspective, desires, and how badly your car handles right now.

As stated earlier, this is an extremely difficult question to answer, because "improve the handling" is an infinitely subjective phrase that means incredibly different things to different people, there are still an infinite # of answers to the question regardless of how you interpret that phrase...

new(about 2 years ago) stock rear spring, 1" drop fronts, bushings(including body), ball joints, tie rods, center link, pitman arm, oversized front sway bar, rear sway bar, stock shocks. i'm willing to spend a few grand. comfort is not my concern, just handling. i lifted the front end and the tierod sleeve seems to have play. that can't be good. starting there.
thanks for the ideas

Sounds like you have a pretty solid foundation minus the little problem that you mentioned.
A matching set of sway bars would help the car. The front factory bar was very small and there was no rear bar. (That I know of) I would check into a rear bar and make sure that they match your spring and leaf rates.
Matching shocks to the set up will help a lot to. It all needs to compliment each other. You can have new parts every where on the car but it will still handle like crap.
When you have a free hour give Marc at SC&C a call.
http://scandc.com/new

Your rear sway bar might actually be hurting your cornering. Might try disconnecting it and see if it improves things for you. Discussion on how/why rear sway bars are sometimes, but not always, a good idea on these cars: http://www.pozziracing.com/camaro_spring_info.htm#antiroll

Your 1" drop in the front, without a corresponding drop in the rear, may also be a problem. These cars are already nose heavy...dropping the front an inch transfers yet more weight to the front. I freely admit to not being any suspension expert but my gut tells me it would make more sense to strive for frt/rear weight balance and flat front/rear ride height, if cornering is to take priority over a certain "look" or stance. Remember these cars came from the factory with a low rear/high front stance...they looked like a boat plowing down the road with nose in the air. So many people have forgotten this and seem to think their rear springs are sacked out when they might not be. But even looking at your photo, it is clear that your car is now set up the exact opposite of that (rear is higher than the front), so it would not surprise me that it might handle substantially different from how it did when first designed. Diving into a turn with a setup that is already leaning forward is just going to cause the nose to dive and the rear to rise even further...maybe far enough to lift a rear tire?

These are just random observations and things to consider. And I could be wrong. Trial & error are likely going to be the only way to confirm what works and what doesn't.

Incidentally, a tie-rod SLEEVE having play? I have a hard time envisioning that. It's very odd...and frankly extremely dangerous. Once toe is set on the alignment rack that thing should be clamped solid and tight to the tie rods/steering arms...it has no moving parts so there is nothing to wear. If it comes loose from the threads you simply lose your steering on that wheel entirely.

Boater Bill, I am looking at using the Eibacn lowering springs on my 69. Did you use the 1inch or the 1.5 .

Thanks

Mine are the 1-inch

Did you like the ride height that you ended up with.

Thanks

I do have a question regarding the Pitman you replaced? The pitmans on 69's with P/S are non wearable... The joint (pitman) is on the center-link (drag-link). People in the past have attempted to swap them out with camaro parts or 67/68 pitmans this will result in large scale steering issues.

I've run 3 different set ups over the years and finally have her dialed in now. For a front spring I was a strong fan of Hotchkis but fell out of love with them over the years. I ran their 2" drop in the front and 1.5" drop in the rear. The front springs are a progressive rate coil (same a eibach). This means that the more pressure you apply you will get varying rates of resistance. I found that this allows the vehicle to bottom-out a lot easier and makes it a bit unpredictable in turns. Needing a change I switched to global west springs. Their springs are constant rate and leave the vehicle with a great ride. I enjoyed their products so much that I got their upper control arms to match. The final change that I made and am currently running is viking double adjustable coil overs with global west lower arms. Short version... check out global west products.

When it comes to my bird I drive the wheels off of it in the corners so I am a bit more aggressive than the average weekend cruiser. I have run many different set ups and The single biggest change that I have ever made has been buying a delphi 600 steering box! It is worth the $. It makes the car respond as if it is a modern muscle car. Tight steering with positive road feel.

Finally, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do NOT let anyone talk you into the guilderstrand mod. It involves drilling out new points to mount your upper control arms too. This is a permanent change to your subframe that can't be undone. Good quality upper control arms (hotchkis, global west, detroit speed, etc..) change the needed geometry for the needed (+6) of positive castor. This mod was from an age when arms were not redesigned on cad programs that change vehicle geometry.

X2 for Global West products. I have their upper and lower front A-arms and subframe connectors.

Did some more research and I have confirmed that the Eibach suspension kits are only built with springs for SBC. Still so many people out there who do not understand the difference between Pontiac 350 and SBC. Springs for a SBC will say lower when used with a Pontiac 350.

I liked where mine ended up. I was careful selecting the wheels and tires to get as wide as I could without any rubbing issues. Plus I'm more "old school" and like the slight nose down look.