Best shocks for stock suspension

1980 F body, just rolls on the high seas. i almost feel like welding the shocks solid. first time driving it a 3 years and it is so bad. i have new Monroes on it, but they are useless. going over speed bumps and my headers hit in the jounce.

what are my options, and adjustables, or just road racing tight ones?

Let me get this straight, you have new shocks in it and it is bouncing up and down over bumps?
Either you don't have new shocks in there or you have defective parts. Did you install them or did someone else do it for you? If someone else did, did you get the old parts back? Welding the shocks will shake the bones out of you..

Either way, driver-quality anything will work fine for a stock suspension.

Ash_Whole said:

1980 F body, just rolls on the high seas. i almost feel like welding the shocks solid. first time driving it a 3 years and it is so bad. i have new Monroes on it, but they are useless. going over speed bumps and my headers hit in the jounce.

what are my options, and adjustables, or just road racing tight ones?

Click to expand...

It's not the shocks. Standard headers hang considerably lower than the drag link. Driver quality or even stiff KYB shocks aren't going to prevent this. Your problem is the torsion bars in these cars are barely 140# spring rate. This was only solved for me when I installed Firm Feel 300# bars. If you can get them still they aren't cheap.

Or you can give the adjusters a full turn and get those heads a little farther off the ground.

it wallows so badly. they are new monroe's that i installed. the suspension is at stock height. there is no spring control. it is a very couch ride. guess im spoiled driving cars with a real suspension

Only time I bottom out my headers is if I roll over those particularly wide residential speed bumps at excessive speed. I’m with OldIron440, crank up the torsion bars a turn and go from there. Short of grabbing a set of FF torsion bars, its all you can really do; short of a turbo 2JZ swap to lighten the front end, lol

The F/M/J body transverse torsion bar front suspension was intended to have a "big car ride". The big cars (C bodies in Mopar Speak) were also softly sprung, huge beasts. To get that desired (by Mopar management/sales) ride, they created a suspension that was basically made of marshmallows. Come 40+ years later, and people are now used to firmer, tighter suspension, so you can't retroactively apply modern suspension desires onto cars that old. As others have already said, you would need to replace the front torsion bars with something heavier, probably higher rate rear leaf springs, and while you are at it, either add a rear sway bar, or increase the diameter of the sway bars on both ends if both are present. Then you can add better shocks. Shocks dampen the suspension movement, they don't set the spring rates (unless you go to a coil over setup, or something like an Alterkation front end). The stiffness of the suspension is essentially set by the spring rate, not by the shock absorbers, unless they are so stiff as to be almost useless, or they have what used to be called "helper springs" or air shocks (none of which are a great idea, or even available any more as far as I know).

You can get these cars to handle as if they're on rails and get a smooth ride all using the factory type suspension. It costs a stupid amount of money though. A stupid amount of which I have tied up in mine. But damn is it fun.

They drive like the typical car their age but not that bad even with worn out shocks.
The biggest thing that makes then sway and wave around is bad bushings and worn out leaf springs. Being an older one there's also a chance there's something wrong with the K frame.

The F/M/J body transverse torsion bar front suspension was intended to have a "big car ride". The big cars (C bodies in Mopar Speak) were also softly sprung, huge beasts( i.e. the suspension was designed to be that way). To get that desired (by Mopar management/sales) ride, they created a suspension that was basically made of marshmallows. Come 40+ years later, and people are now used to firmer, tighter suspension, so you can't retroactively apply modern suspension desires onto cars that old. As others have already said, you would need to replace the front torsion bars with something heavier, probably higher rate rear leaf springs, and while you are at it, either add a rear sway bar, or increase the diameter of the sway bars on both ends if both are present as well as all of the bushings and the K frame mounts (with either polyurethane or solid metal). Need to check the tie rod ends (inner and outer) along with alignment. Then you can add better shocks. Shocks dampen the suspension movement, they don't set the spring rates (unless you go to a coil over setup, or something like an Alterkation front end). The stiffness of the suspension is essentially set by the spring rate, not by the shocks, unless they are so stiff as to be almost useless. After all that, you may want to look at the steering box, and the amount of power assist (and yes, it is overboosted, can be fixed with washers if the steering box is in good shape)

Sometime in the late 90’s maybe around the” cobra” mustang or SVT era, ford switch the mustang GT to a softer spring, and upped the shock rate. The effect was a bit better handling or the same handling and better ride quality.

I would investigate a shock with a more firm rebound to dampen the uncontained bouncing… assuming everything else is working properly…