A lot of us dream of building up one of these old warriors to drive on the streets and highways with a lot of horsepower. Unfortunately these beautifully-styled old Pontiacs came equipped with woefully inadequate brakes and handling characteristics for any real high-performance driving.
When you up the power to 400 or 500 horsepower or even more you really need much better handling and stopping ability. An expensive set of disc brakes looks pretty cheap in comparison to the body shop bill if you can't haul it down from speed.
First order of business is gathering up all the parts needed.
SPC front suspension arms. The lower tubular control arms will drop the car by one inch. The lower ball joint mounting position has been moved forward by about one inch, when you dial in additional caster for high-speed stability the wheel won't end up sitting toward the back of the wheel opening when looking from the side.
The upper control arms are fully adjustable so no alignment shims are needed. This Pro-Lite set features lightweight billet aluminum hex adjusters and cross shafts.
Currie Currectrac rear control arms. The uppers are fully adjustable so you can set the pinion angle, the lowers are lightweight billet aluminum.
Forged aluminum AFX spindles (made for
A,
F and
X-body cars) and billet aluminum A-body steering arms from ATS (American Touring Specialties
http://www.t56kit.com/).
They are designed to accept 1997 and up C5 & C6 Corvette hubs.
A set of C6 Corvette SKF racing hubs. I can't run the forged aluminum ATS spindles without these, I went for these heavy-duty parts instead of standard OEM replacement hubs hoping that they'll last me a lifetime. They can withstand the stress of hard cornering much better than the OEM hubs.
Along with the front hubs I bought some new MOOG A-body upper ball joints and outer tie rod ends to complete the front suspension upgrade.
I went with C6 Corvette Z06 brakes. I decided to upgrade my brake package with some DBA (Disc Brakes Australia) 4000 slotted rotors and Hawk ceramic brake pads. Front rotors measure 355mm X 32mm (14.0" X 1.25") and the rears are 340mm X 26mm (13.4" X 1.00"). I'll have plenty of braking power to stop this train once it gets a-rollin', a set of 18" wheels will be required due to the size of these brakes.
Some new Bilstein Heavy-Duty gas shocks will pretty much finish off the suspension upgrades. These are supposed to be one of the best riding and handling shocks available for a reasonable price, by just looking at them the German quality is clearly evident. Part # F4-BE3-2972-HO front and AK2080 rear.
