What about hotchkis suspension? They just introduced a set up for the challenger n cuda... Any feedback on these ?
I was just out at the track during a Hotchkis test and tune two weeks ago. They did a
full on and fully data recorded before and after test on a 440 Challenger. They took videos before and after to show the difference. One camera mounted on a chase Z06 Corvette with added supercharger, another camera on the Challenger itself and another shot from a person on the ground.
They had some real nice telemetry equipment on their test cars. It was held in by a neat booster seat looking deal that could be buckled into each car they go measurements from. It was a G2X pro that you can see at the very bottom of the last picture I posted below in this reply (
http://www.racepak.com/ )
Those G2X units record a lot of great info beyond even laps times. Skid pad G-force, skid pad times, recorded instantaneous all direction G-forces speeds throughout the course, with GPS location plotted on the given track.... And that's not even half of its real capability.
The
"before" was a 440 Challenger with 225/60/15 tires and 15x7 steel rims, 1" torsion bars, Hotchkis subframe connectors, stock upgraded 11.75 front rotor, stock 10" rear drums. Those parameters were the same before and after. The rims/tires were changed from Magnum 500/Dunlops to BFG/Rallyes same size tire and rims. So when you see pictures of the Rallyes, those are the “after” pictures
For the
"after", they added/changed to these Hotchkis parts: front sway bar, added rear sway bar, rear leaf springs, geometry correct front leaf spring hanger, geometry corrected tubular upper control arms, spherical end linked strut rods, and Hotchkis valved shocks.
The difference was very big. In the “before” sessions, the chase Z06 Vette looked like he was going to run over the Challenger at times. In the “after” sessions the Z06 had to put down his cup and coffee. He had to work it to keep in camera distance. But let’s not kid ourselves, the Z06 was still faster.
The real interesting thing I learned from the 440 Challenger before and after test was about the brakes...
Of course the Challenger had much faster lap times "after" the improvements. One thing that was not changed were 11.75" factory type disk with rear 10" drums. On the "after" tests, the Z06 w/added supercharger camera car obviously had to get up on the wheel to keep up.
I asked the pro driver of the Challenger how the brakes held up. Well he said, "They were fine." I would have thought he would have cooked the brakes on that 440 Challenger with the increase of speed entering the corners. But he explained that when the suspension is set right you are not overloading just one or two of the brakes. He said he could use much more brake now that more tires were gripping.
