I have an 86 Monte Carlo LS with stock suspension. I'm probably going to be installing a different rear end(Moser 12bolt?) or having the original rebuilt, so I figured it would be a good time to replace some suspension parts. I'm looking for suggestions on if I should go with shocks and springs or coilovers and recommended Brands. I'm looking to have a nice smooth ride with good handling. The car is used for street cruising. I'm considering lowering the ride height an inch or 2"max, if it doesn't affect the ride quality, but I'm ok with keeping it stock ride height if that's going to give me the smoother ride. Any suggestions and advice will be appreciated. Thank you.

I have 2" drop spindles and aldan coilovers all the way around and I'm very happy with the ride and mine is just a street car, Everything else is stock except for f body front sway bar. I really like the coilovers for street because you can adjust ride height and ride quality mine are adjustable from 0-3". If racing i think springs might be better. After some thought I think atleast adjustable upper and lower rear control arms would be nice in case you need to adjust pinion angle with new rear end but maybe not necessary others know more on this subject than me. The thing with any coilover is how is it going to work with the new rear end mounts? The spring game is a tough one to play because what will be actual height after it settles and what rate spring do you go with for the ride quality you want? Hopefully others will jump in with different answers. Here is a few pics of my ride height, I think I'm 2.5"-3" all the way around.

I would do springs personally. Lowering with springs gets you into a better spot in the camber curve, meaning when the car rolls to the outside of a turn, the front outside tire will camber in and keep the tire in better contact with the ground. Stiffer springs do very little to make the ride harsher. A stiff ride comes from dampers. I went from trimmed stock springs in the 500 lb/in range to 900 lb/in front springs on my car and the change in ride quality was hardly noticeable. I can feel much more difference turning in a few clicks on my dampers.

These cars sit high from the factory, so you have plenty of room to drop the car 2" and not have to worry about it bottoming out.

One thing to be aware of that can be cause by lowering the rear of the car or by changing to a 12-bolt is you may need to adjust the pinion angle to tune out driveline vibrations. This requires adjustable upper control arms.

I can help you with specific parts if you want to PM me.

nice looking gbody... what spring and shock package did you go with?

Stiffness per se never comes from dampers or shocks, depending on your nomenclature.

The A/G body is such a floppy mess of resonances that any combination of stiffnesses and viscous dampenings may or may not play well with one or more of those resonances.

Stiffen-up the chassis, however, and my limited experience shows that the car 'behaves" much better. I would always start with the chassis in this quest. Once the body behaves as a rigid body, tuning the suspension becomes much more straightforward (HTH.)

Whatever you choose for a ride height, just make sure the shocks have plenty of travel up and down around that ride height. When the front is lowered, the OEM shock mounting points get pretty close together and if the shock you choose isn't the right size, it'll top out or bottom out and make the ride feel horrible..

This is why I like to recommend either a complete Ridetech or UMI kit because all of the parts in their kits are designed to work together. The Ridetech Street grip kit may be a great choice for the OP's needs.

That Ridetech street grip is a nice looking kit.

Ya know when I looked at their Street Grip front springs for a Monte this is what they show. Not coilovers but a really stout front spring rate and a single adj shock
https://www.ridetech.com/product/1978-1988-g-body-streetgrip-dual-rate-front-coil-springs-pair/

I am surprised how high the rate is on that front spring, primary 810, secondary 1090. Some would find that a very stiff, busy, harsh for a street car. The compressed length for that spring would be important to effect the ride height. They suggest a 25 3/4" front height with a 2" drop spindle could be obtained. I do know that at 25 3/4" ride height you would need a very stiff spring to keep a fat front tire from rubbing the inner wells.

The Ridetech Street Grip rear coil spring is here, says 2" drop, 26 3/4" ride height, and is also very stiff at 150 -250.
https://www.ridetech.com/product/1978-1988-g-body-streetgrip-dual-rate-rear-coil-springs-pair/
And although the picture shows only a pigtail at one end that Ridetech spring is a double pigtails and would just drop right in to the rear. But because it is a short spring at a high rate you would need to be leery of the spring loosing all tension at full droop and possible failing out. A rear droop travel limiter, a cable should be installed with that spring.
If interested I have a like new set of those rear springs which I've never ran in the car but bought to do spring rate testing on.
In the end to achieve the rear coil spring rate and ride height desired a BMR 3rd Gen F-body progressive spring was cut down and used.
I believe there is also a UMI and Global West rear spring laying on the shelf with the Ridetech.

Choices need to be made when choosing ride height, spring rate and ride quality. Because handling only compromises a very small amount of the driving time on most "toy" cars, call them what you like, you need to be subjective about the goals. Really low ride height like a 25 3/4" is much better for the autox and maybe south FL, but in most place will be to low. We need to remember low also is everything under the car, not cool to have skid plates on a Monte.
And to compensate to prevent bottoming a much higher compression rate spring slows the reduction of ground clearance. It's still the same distance/travel to max out available compression distance just requires more weight transfer. A stiffer spring CAN reduce suspension bottoming, but.
Ride quality, as with beauty, is only relative to the driver, and also in my car, my wife. She hates it, I have learned to tolerate what I have put together and most just say it might be one of the tightest car they have ridden in. I'm a 700 lb non progressive spring.

Once you pick spring rates, ride height then you do dampeners, shocks. This is also then when the game changes. Now budget and the need to control travel get into how much is enough. From an over the counter replacement shock, then Bilstein, Koni, single adjustable, double , triple and the cash register doesn't stop ringing longer.
Now the next choice, coilovers,which can be set up for ride height, most times easily, the spring rate can be varied, the shock quality is good at the least and dollars dictates the limits. Would say a good coilover four corner swap would be twice the price of a good coil spring and shock swap.

For most enthusiasts the end usually doesn't justify the means, meaning we usually spend more, expect more, and didn't need what we thought we needed. But it's the nature of the car sickness.

Once you have a good idea of the necessary end result, and the budget, we will be happy to spend your money. That's what are friends for.
Bob

Hi Bob,

Lots of good advice there. Whenever I hear that somebody wants a "nice, smooth ride," and "good handling," I cringe. Not because the request is unreasonable, which it isn't, but if you ask 30 different people what those things mean, you'll get 30 different answers assuming you could do the Vulcan mind-meld to get their true thoughts, let alone try to cut through the further ambiguity imposed by the inherent imprecision of language.

86blackbeauty, I would only caution that most of the people that have replied are much more into good handling than a "nice, smooth ride." I suppose the one failsafe is to go with full coil-overs with adjustable shock settings, but this is $$$. Failing that, you could play it safe and much cheaper by dropping the front ride height with shorter, moderately stiffer springs (you could cut half a turn from your existing front springs to save $ and drop the front while making the front moderately stiffer) and using Bilstein shocks, to see if you like that first. Lowering the front, as SSM said, puts you in a better bias for camber. While you're at it, replace all the wear items in the suspension and all the suspension bushings. A new or rebuilt steering box will no doubt help as well.

The nice thing about this strategy is it's almost impossible to make any big mistakes.

Beyond that, any advice is likely to be essentially a shot in the dark for you.

HTH,
MAP

Thank you. My setup is very pieced together, depending somewhat on what I could get a deal on along the way. As MAP said, ride quality is of secondary importance to me, to this:



But to answer your question I have Viking Cruisader double-adjustable dampers all around, plus a bunch of geometry fixes and upgraded anti-roll bars. My front coilovers are hard mounted to the frame with parts I made, rather than using the factory upper shock mount.

What is the recommended spring rate for a street driven, iron headed, small block chevy??

Hi Wilson,

As simple as that question sounds, it's actually very complex. It depends on so many factors, such as the typical roughness of the streets that you drive on, your personal tolerance of NVH, and how your suspension controls camber as the wheels move up and down. There are many more, and they tend to be mutually exclusive, so any choice for stiffness will be a compromise.

Most fundamentally, the smoother the roads you drive on, and the more aggressively you drive, the stiffer you'll want your springs to be.