The Dart came without a swaybar at the time I bought it, and it had a nasty tendency to suddenly oversteer while cornering. Especially on wet roads, the car would just ‘dive-in’ and the rear would break out. Better tires helped slightly with this problem, but it was obvious something had to be done about it.
After getting a used swaybar from a friend, it turned out to be one for earlier Darts. I tried modifying it for my Dodge, but decided to just get a proper made and sized swaybar instead. Looking at various swaybars, my choice fell on the Hellwig 1-1/8″ swaybar.
After mounting the bar the following testdrive showed a greatly improved ride-quality, especially when cornering. The car now pretty much went level through the corners and the nose-dive/rear-end breakout was gone.
Here's a videoclip of my '73 Dodge Dart showing the movements of the front suspension during a short drive around the garage. Nice view of the workings of the suspension system which consists of 1" torsion bars, Hotchkis adjustable shocks and Hellwig swaybar. I had just replaced the front strutrod…
Last sunday I was finally able to spend some time on a racecircuit with my '73 Dart. The track is at the Dutch city of Zandvoort. The tracktime event was a 20 minute event that let you run around on the track with other cars. No race, just free tracktime…
Today I installed a pair of Bilstein RCD shocks on the rear of my Dart. Partnumber: 55-R092. The previous shocks were a pair of Monroe Sensatrac Loadleveler shocks. The ride quality after installing the Bilstein shocks was greatly improved, making the car handle speedbumps for instace, much more 'grown up';…
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