I have noticed that the general consencus on these bars is that they are junk. I bought a set of these used 4 years ago and they actually do there job fairly well and Have had no problems with them running 12.30s on bfg drag radials.
Now my car will run mid 11s and traction is getting a little scarce, so my questions are: has anyone made these bars work on 11 second or faster cars, If so then how,(tires shocks, springs, ETC.) and also, for the people that consider them junk, what problems did you have with them so I can decide wether to stick with them or not.
Thanks for any help. I have used the search feature on this forum many times, and can say there is no place that I know of that is better to get good opinions and advice than here on thirdgen.org.

 

What are the SSM Lakewood lift bars? SSM and Lakewood are two different companies, no? Lakewood makes those bolt-in "Traction Action" lift bars and Southside Machine makes (made...) those bars that weld to a crossmember. Which are you talking about?

 

There is no such thing as a traction type bar for a torque arm suspension.

A good adjustable torque arm that moves the front mount off of the transmission and some good LCA, LCARB and panhard bar are more than enough for a fast car.

The torque arm's long forward lift point is better than a short lift point offered by the so called lift bars.

 

If you are using SSM lift bars I have a set thay will work on 11 second cars with no proublem. When you start to run faster you will notice it hits the tire very hard. I use the koni SPA1 struts up front with stock 4cyl springs and comp eng. shocks set at 70/30 in the rear with stock springs. With my current set up I run the front sturts on full firm setting. and it cuts 1.40 60 fts. I do plan on changing the rear set up soon for a lighter torq arm set up. And with the torq arm also will come the ability to adj the set up softin the hit a little. And the 1.40 60 was on a 275-60-15 drag radial

 

Stephen, I think he is reffering to these: http://store.summitracing.com/partde...5&autoview=sku

My buddy had a set and on a hard launch they broke in half on the pass. side, on a mild 383.

 

I had these on my car right after they first came out. The brackets broke fairly soon and I am still waiting for a reply to my question to them after several years. I have since installed a set of Pete Z bars and they work great. I've had them on the car since '03 without trouble.
The Lakewoods are just plain junk and their tech support is non-existant, save your money and buy a different set up. Either a Petez setup, S & W torque arm based one or one of the others.

 

I guess that I have the lakewood bars, they went in with no welding. I had bought them used and the person said they were ssm. I see that some people have had the lakewood brackets break. Was it at the weld?These seem to be made of pretty decent material, or is the lca to thin of tubing.
I would like to point out that the short bar does hook very well on a street car, it plants the tires considerably better than a factory tourqe arm which pulls them away from the pavement(squatting).My questions are mostly pertaining to a drag car with decent power.Do most of you guys seem to do better with a short tourqe arm? It seems that some tourqe arms keep the mount fairly far forward which I would think would increase squat.
As far as the relocated lca mounts go, do most people use them just to relevel the lca after loweringthe car, or do people use them to put the rear lca higher than the front, which would increase antisquat for better traction, in the same manner that a shorter tourqe arm length would.
If I have any of this info wrong feel free to correct me, suspension is a little over my head, I know just enough to be dangerous.

 

On mine it was the main brackets at the bends. Like I said, Lakewoods service is **** poor. 7 years waiting on a reply tells a lot about a company. Pete Z stands behind his product even 5 yrs later when a weld fatigues.

 

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The lower hp cars like the shorter torque arm, it creates good anti squat and wieght transfer, it`s when you really start putting power to them that it`s hard to keep the front end down. My opinion and I`m sure there are others is that the short arms put more load or hit for a shorter time period vs. a longer arm which will hit with less initial load / transfer but will keep it there for a longer period.

Squat /anti squat is a direct result of the instant center point, the length of the arm has little to do with it compared to the angle of it.

Both, sort of..the relocation mounts can be used to level the arms on a lowered car or change the angle to lengthen shorten the instant center point, shortening the I.C. would increase anti-sqaut & lengthing would decrease it. IMO you never would want the front of the lower control arm lower the the rear mounting point, so lowering the rear mounting point of the lower control arm would result in a more anti squat and raising it would increase squat. hope this helps

 

greezemonkey hit the nail on the head. The length of the tq arm has little to do with squat/anit-squat. Squat is relative to your instant center angle, mostly dictated by the angle of you lca's.

A shorter tq arm reacts faster, but with less leverage. Once you hit a certain power level(around 500+hp) the shorter arms tend to hit too hard, causing the tires to rebound and un-load. It takes a ridiculous tight shock valving to counter this, thus by the time you make it 60ft decent it's hard to get it to re-hit during a gear change to keep the tires planted. The shorter arms' also become much less consistent at higher power levels(again due to the fast re-action).

The stock suspension radial tire cars down here are getting into the 1.1x 60's.

 

Thank you for a very educated answer! So from what I gather, a short arm or lift bars will work until you either have trouble keeping the front end down, or are unloading the suspension after the starting line, or during shifting? I do like using these bars because they hook very well on the street, and they are bought and paid for. I would really like to see if I can keep these and make my suspension work well at the track. I am thinking that a cheap set of adjustable rear drag shocks to adjust the hit on the tires, and 90/10 struts should help, is there anything else I should look into?Thanks for your help.

 

heres an interesting thread, you could use the strange rear shocks with little to no trouble, nice adjustments too. the fronts would need the strut plates modded and spindles machined though, for The front there is no cheap or easy way, 90/10 might be too much with the SSM bars but you could try

https://www.thirdgen.org/forums/susp...nt-struts.html

 

I have them on my car. I got the whole rear set up complete with a 9 inch for 600 bucks off ebay. Now my car has been 1.31 60 ft and 9.80's. I still need the right carb and the right converter for this new motor. I belive that I need different rear shocks also, I have the 50/50 on it right now. I am going to go with a strange adjustable. If I ever get into a traction issue with this rear I will go back to a TQ arm, but I have not had a problem yet. Time will tell. For tires this is all on a 275 MT drag radial.

 

So you have been able to put a lot of power through these, have you ever had wheel hop or tire unloading issues, do they cause your rear end to lift much at takeoff?I have about a 500hp motor in my car, with bfg 275 drag radials, the tires just go up in smoke and the suspension stays nuetral if I stand on it from a standstill, I notice that if I roll into the throttle they will lift the front and rear end and plant the tires.

 

I have never had wheel hop and I havent had the car on a real good track yet so I dont know if the car is spinning cuase its unloading or if its just the track. My motor before this one was about a 500 hp motor and i had no issues at all. I think you will be fine. It does lift the rear up. I am going to try different shocks, something adjustable. I think you will be fine with 11 sec car.


Ok I dont know why its not letting me post a pic but take a look at that link.

 

In the pass in the picture, how much hp and what was the timeslip. I am just curious because I think I can click off a low 11 and I wonder if I can get the front end up a little.

 

The link I posted was with the new motor and that is making around 660 HP @ the flywheel. The time slip I am not sure of I dont know what pass that was. With my other motor I could never get the front end to come up but it only had a 3500 stall in it, in fact its the same one that is in it now. This winter I will get that converter redone for this motor. You might be able to lift them you never know.

 

Blue beast, You have the ssm bars right?I actually have the lakewoods, I wonder how similar they are? Yours connect to a crossmember under the car right? How long are they?

 

Yes I have the SSM bars and they do connect to a crossmember that is welded on the subframes. I just went out and measured them they are about 33 inches long.

 

The instant center point is the point where a line drawn through the 2 pivots of the LCA crosses a line drawn perpendicular to the torque arm through the sliding front link. A sorter TA will move the instant center back and up or down depending on the angle of the LCA. Changing the LCA angle will move the instant center up or down. In general, the farther up OR back the IC is, the more antisquat you have. So both lowering the back mount point of the LCA's or shortening the TA will result in more antisquat, but for what it's worth, it happens faster changing LCA angle than TA length.

If you get rid of the sliding link at the front of the TA, then that point becomes the new IC, but unless the LCA’s are as long as the TA and mounted in the same plane or their mount points are moved inline with the centerline of the axle height you will end up with bind preventing the axle from moving correctly.

More antisquat will push the tires down harder into the pavement, but once you have some, adding more power has the same effect. Eventually you hit the point where the shocks or other suspension parts hit the end of their travel and the sudden jolt upsets the tires or the pressure applied to the tires exceeds what the tire sidewalls can absorb and they “bounce.” In both cases you suddenly loose traction.

 

well ahh....guess i dont know how to respond to this other than maybe say, screw 500hp then and go right into the 600hp N/A range and higher with nitrous and watch how the consistancey comes back then....i guess 5 back to back passes going 1.36 60's with the rear tires tripping the beams is crappey consistency since truth be told, i did have .006 spread between those passes worst to best in the 60'

okay, switching off my smartazz switch

 

You're not alone in doing so, but there's not many running higher power levels and getting consistent launches out of the short arms. Very few who aren't on a full slick. There's a radial car down here running well into the 4's in the 1/8(I've seen 4.80, and that was 6-8 months ago) running the Jegs arm. It's just very tempermental. - If you stay on the rear wheels that long, you're helping yourself. The longer you can keep the weight transfered the easier it is to be consistent. Your slicks also have less tendecy to re-bound than radials.

Get up by the 1k hp number, put it on radials and shoot for something around a 4.70 and tell me how consistent it is.

everybody likes a little _____, nobody likes a smart _______ - just an fyi, I'm just f'ing around as well. It's obvious that you know what you're doing.

 

Swagwell, i hear ya loud and clear But that's the reason i just dont want to get into the radial tires, very very finickey to get any sort of consistant traction unless there's ALOT of time and oney spent in the chasis tuning department.

I thought about making a adjustiable bracket for my jeg arm where it attaches to the tunnel mount...make a bracket so i could lower the front mount to redirect some of the hit back into the chasis as i feared increasing the output of this current motor and then narrowing up the slicks would put me in a bad spot with 60's moving all over, but once again i'm just happpily dumbfounded at how well this suspension design works!!! The bias ply slicks help big time, and even though they're only 9" slicks i know whatever the air gives me that day for performance, that is what it'll be all day long...i fortunate enough also to run at 3 very well taken care of tracks also, so i'm spoiled in that regard also as are the guys i run. All 3 tracks in bracket mode i'll move .002-.006 all day/race, BUT we have a known crap track that i forfeit after last seasons 1 try, and i could'nt keep my 60's within .04 per pass and the funniest part, the track champs in Pro have huuuuge tired cars that just barely make the ET cut...so what's that tell ya about that POS track.

Regardless, as it sits it handles 600hp just fine, and also the 150 and 200hp shot of juicey juice just fine (convertor flare obviously too) but you know what i'm sayin Once i get my heads back (found HUUUGE problems with them from jackazz that supposedly fixed and then ported them) i'm going to fab up some sort of way to add weight over the nose of the car to try and kill the wheelie on the cheap...mid 10 second cars with wheelie bars is about as gay as gay can be IMO and the front limiters had me perplexed last season so i'm hoping by adding 50lb+ just behind the radiator and removing my subwoofers i should be able to run a wee bit faster and HOPEFULLY keep the front end down...but we shall see!!!

 

If you lessen the control arm angle a little you move the IC forward, thus less leverage to lift the front end. - The straighter you can run the lca's, the more they push forward instead of up. What did you not like about limiters? They should have done the trick.

I've always believed in lessening the rear hit vs adding weight to the nose. We do all we can to lessen weight, shouldn't add any back. And besides, you need to check the bumper mounts from time to time anyhow.....

The car I was talking about down here running the Jegs' arm has an adjustable front mount just as you're talking.

 

Once i get the engine back together, i'll have to look at the LCA set up and see what could be fabbed up bracket wise. I "think" they're level, but have'nt paid much attention these past few years to say with any honesty, but i've been wanting to transfer more energy back ionto the chasis just because...car is deadly consistant already, but i dont like the wheelies when trying to race since like i said, it's a R/T consistency killer. Was always a bad mamajamma on the tree until this engine and front end coming up, i drive other peoples cars that leave flat and i'm back in my .015-.020 movement in R/T's again so i know it's the front end popping up that is causing me headaches, now just trying to figure out the best route to fix it...i'm a heavy pig already so yeah, adding weight is 'nt what i want to do, but it'd be a fast fix.

So do you think it'd be better to raise the back or drop the front of the LCA in this situation? If i fab a mount for the front LCA's i'll make them so there is some adjustiment up/down so i'll have more than one hole to tune it a bit.

Front end limiters, i bought the kit, and it just did'nt have any sure fire way to hook it up on the car to keep it away from anything vital when street driving. so i went out and bought all the components to make my own, drilled a hole through the strut tower braceing and installed a eye bolt...soon as i raised the front of the car off the ground, it opened it up. So, next eye bolt i welded shut and installed that. Raised the front end to set amoount of lift and this time it made the round eye bolt into a oval shaped..stretched it like crazy. So BIL grabbed some hardened/forged eye bolts from where he works and i just never messed with it anymore at that point since i know it's a chasis tuning issue and i'd just soon do it right vs putting a band aid on it. Not to mention the obvious, 9" tire i need the weight of the car on the tires to keep it stuck, and i'm afraid with a limiter or wheelie bar i'll pass "that point" and it'll unload the rear tires and i definately dont want/need that to happen...so would rather tune suspension/chasis instead.

I'm going to give this a serious look see once i get the engine parts back and have the car out of the trailer again, seems like an easy enough fix, and honestly i would'nt have to move them down much in the back to make a biig move on the IC/AS #'s.

 

I'd leave the front mount alone, as that leaves you open as to what classes you can run the car in(you may one day decide that radial class would be fun). Raising the rear some would do it. - I'd finish the limiters up right and try that first. You may not need more than maybe 1" less travel to make a big difference, and they won't change the initial transfer like adding weight will.

- not a really good pic, but the only one showing my limiters on photobucket. Mine tie to the front cage/strut pipe, since it runs through the strut tower. Was done the same way when we had the stock k-member and arms. Just two c-shape brackets welded to the pipe with a short section of 3/16 plate with drilled holes pinned between them. Simply pull a hair-pin and rmove the cross pin to re-adjust(like most aftermarket types, but home-made like most the rest of the car).
http://s455.photobucket.com/albums/q...ntassembly.jpg