Step one: gather parts and admire them:
Step two: take your last look at what you used to have:
Step three: rip stuff apart:
Step four: check out the old parts on the floor:
Step five: put the new stuff in and smile at what you've done:
Chassis data for the curious:
The backspacing on the 16x8 f-body front wheels (which I use on all 4 corners of the SS) is 4.5". This is a bit confusing at first because you would think an 8" rim with 0mm offset would have 4" of backspacing. But truth be told, an 8" rim measured from lip to lip is really 9". The tire mounting surface is the 8" part. Anyway, once you get a 245/50ZR16 tire mounted, your overall backspacing will be 5". This is about the most you can get away with. Any more than this and you'll be needing a spacer. You *may* have light rubbing on the rear frame under HARD cornering, but shouldn't be a real problem. On the front, it's highly recommended to get a steering box from an f-body with 16" wheels so your stops will be correct. This is the "XH" box to look for in yards. You *will* rub in the front on full-lock turns if you aren't careful. If I could magically change my backspacing, I'd want my *overall* backspacing to be 4.5" in the REAR (the front is fine). That extra 1/2" really makes a difference. I'd even be happy with 4.75". The 5" that I have now is fine, but in a perfect world, I'd like to set the wheels/tires out just a hair more. What I've gone ahead and done is added 5/16" (0.3125" or 8mm) wheel spacers to the rear. This gets me pretty close to my desired look. And I feel ok about safety. With the spacers on, there was still 3/4" of stud thread showing. This gets me to about 4.69" of overall back-spacing.
Oh and if you're wondering, the f-body rear wheels are 16mm offset, which is why g-body guys don't use them. That's an extra 0.63" of backspacing. WAY too much. You'd definitely need a huge spacer with those, which is not recommended. The reason for this is that the f-body rear-end is wider.
Now, on to ride height. I just measured the SS now that it's off the jack stands and finally on its new Hotchkis front and rear springs. Note that the springs have not settled yet and the ride height will probably come down a bit after a little driving. Anyway, I measured from the ground to the center of the wheel well lip on all 4 corners. I really wish I had done this with my old setup so I could see before and after :( The Hotchkis springs are 600 pounds per inch in the front. The factory SS F41 springs are 420 pounds per inch. I don't remember what the F41 rear springs were, but I think around 120 pounds per inch. The Hotchkis rears are 135.
I'll adjust these number as/if the car settles and anything changes.
Now, I'll be honest. Even after all this hard work, I'm not completely happy. The performance of the new suspension is amazing. The car rides very nicely, corners hard, never bottoms out, doesn't float, it's excellent. My problem is mostly with the "looks". Is my suspension and tire/wheel package functional? You bet. Do I wish it were lower so it looked better? Yes. But I feel that if I went much lower, I'd have issues with bottoming out and ground clearance in general. I just hate the gap from the top of the tire to the wheel well. At least it's lower than the factory 4x4 stance!
The tires are BFG g-Force T/A KDW 245/50ZR16 97Y's. These things have an amazingly stiff sidewall. They are made for hard cornering. They call for 44psi max pressure. The treadwear rating is 300 (which is right in the middle of the 100 to 500 scale). The traction rating is AA. The temperature rating is A. I don't know what the K in KDW stands for but the D is dry and the W is wet. They make KD's (dry only), KDW's (dry and wet) and KDWS's (dry, wet and snow). They are Z rated (149+ mph) but they are also Y rated (186 mph). That's where the Y in "97Y" comes from. The 97 is the load rating. 97 indicates 1609 pounds. Of course, the R is for radial. These tires *are* directional, but for some reason, the literature says they are unidirectional, not sure why. BFG is, of course, BFGoodrich. T/A is a BFG thing, it stands for Traction/Advantage. I had to look that up, I had no idea. BFG rates these g-Force T/A's as their best Ultra-High Performance tire. The other tire in this category from BFG is the Comp T/A ZR. The only thing I don't like about these tires is mostly cosmetic. The tread pattern is beautiful, but the shoulders are "rounded" and less "square" Some of you know what I mean by this. I like the look of the square shouldered tires. But no big deal, the performace matters more than the appearance to me. But it's good to have both :) I've decided that the next time the Monte needs tires, I'm going to put 255/50ZR16's out back for even more meat in the wheel well and to nail the factory diameter exactly. You can't get that size the g-Force T/A's. I'll probably try Kuhmo.
I have a G-Tech Pro on the way. Perhaps one day I'll have some skid-pad numbers to share. My pipe-dream is for the Monte to pull .95g's. :) Yeah... right.
