1969 Chevy El Camino - The Agile A-Body Part I

Graphic DepictionIt's all well and good for us to talk about "improved handling," but it's better still when we can show you. First of all, note the drastic reduction in body roll in our before and after photos. We all know that cutting down body roll is a good thing; John Hotchkis explains why: "With increased roll stiffness, the car turns more quickly and is better balanced." The real action, however, happens where the rubber meets the road. "The secret," Hotchkis continues, "is to manage the tire contact patch." Check out the Elky's right front tire in each of our photos.

In stock form, the tire is literally falling over and cornering on its side. Once TVS-equipped, cornering is happening on the tires' contact patch, which is as it should be. There's a lot of grip happening here, much more than any tire could achieve with the stock suspension. This is especially important with modern rubber. "Today's tires are better than the race rubber available when these cars were new," Hotchkis observes. Stiffer is generally better, but if the sway bar/spring combo is too stiff, the tires are overpowered and pull on road ripples. It's a balancing act; in this case, well-balanced is what we got.

ON THE TEST TRACK

According to Hotchkis, high-horsepower vehicles can bend or break the upper frame crossmember mounts. Accordingly, it offers stout trailing-arm mount braces to replace the flimsy stamped steel pieces some A-bodies came with.	The adjustable mount braces run from the inside of the lower trailing-arm mount to the outside of the upper trailing-arm mount. By reinforcing the car's upper crossmember, overall chassis stiffness-and therefore performance-is improved.	The Elky's factory lower trailing arms show attempts at reinforcement, but are still weak, especially when compared to the fully boxed Hotchkis replacement. With stronger arms and polyurethane bushings in place, wheelhop is reduced and stability improved.
Here we see a garden-variety A-body lower trailing arm setup. Note that the factory sway bar bolts directly to the trailing arm.	Hotchkis' new Extreme rear sway bar mounts indirectly to the trailing arms, using dogbone-style mounts fitted with polyurethane bushings. "The bar is always twisting and turning off the trailing arms," Hotchkis explained. "This way, the bar goes up and down on bushings; it's a better mounting solution." In addition to reducing bind and stress placed on the bar, this setup is adjustable. Using the forward mounting points provides 100 percent more stiffness than the stock bar. The rear mount is 75 percent more.	The Hotchkis-enhanced rear suspension setup is considerably stiffer than the stock arrangement, but also works more freely by using polyurethane bushings, especially in the sway bar mounts and the upper trailing-arm pivots.
Finally, we wanted to take maximum advantage of our newly installed suspension upgrades, so we mounted up a set of custom-painted 17x8-inch IROC rims from Oasis Wheels and clad them in sticky hi-po rubber, BFG g-Force KDWs, 245/45ZR17.