The integrity of those dropped spindles is questionable.
Sure, I suppose if you throw out all engineering and scientific principles and just hit them with an 8 lb sledge you have a point. The test that MA did is ridiculous at best, and complete misinformation at worst. It's not a representative test, it's not repeatable, and there is no way to know how much force was imparted on the spindles before they failed. Basically, there's absolutely nothing scientific about what they did.
I am still perplexed by the dropped spindles and the need.
I have a lowered e body with no suspension travel issues or large t bar preload.
My car is low. 3.5 inches to the bottom of the stock side pipes....is that close enough to the ground??
Start with lowering the car in the rear by using the spring hangers that facilitate this. A backyard way to do this would to be elongated the mounting holes so you can flip the hanger as the bolt patter is not square. Now the rear of the car is lower and the now the front end must follow. BTW this will increase the caster in a positive direction as you have rotated the top of the spindle towards the rear. If you put dropped spindles on and raise the car...now think...the chassis would be now higher in the front than the rear when you raise the t bars.
I still believe that incorrect clocking on the t bars is the root cause for not enough preload on the t bars. I have never run out of suspension travel flogging the road course... or on the street. I have been studying pics of my car on the track at speed and I cannot justify the need or use of dropped spindles to enhance the handling or lower the car. I have years of pics so the change in handling is easily seen.
I have a 1970 Dodge Charger R/T going to the road course in June 2011 set up similar to my E body. Lowered the proper way etc etc etc. It will be interesting for sure with the big fat heavy B Body in the turns.
The ability to lower our cars is based entirely on the set up of the suspension that is being run, and while your car may have been easily lowered with your current set up, we know absolutely nothing about what your set up actually is. What size torsion bars are you running? You alluded to "1.something", but the difference between a 1.03 bar and a 1.12 is nearly 100# of spring rate. Big block or small block car?
You also give a measurement off of the exhaust, which, sorry, is a pretty lousy reference point. Not all of us have side pipes, and even for those that do the height of the exhaust is fairly flexible with regard to the rest car. Plus, the height of the side pipes is a lot more closely tied to how low the rear of the car is, not the front. How far off the ground is your K-member? Or the bottom of the quarter panel in front of the rear wheel opening? Those are better references because we all have those parts, and they're location is pretty much dependent on the suspension.
I'm not questioning your knowledge on these suspensions, but as I'm sure you know there are a lot of different ways to set up the suspension of these cars. In the past there weren't a whole lot of options out there for getting these cars to handle. Now there are tons, from drop spindles to tubular upper and lower control arms, some with altered suspension points, even entire K frame and suspension replacements like the Alterkation, XV's level 1, or Magnumforce's tubular K member.
All we're doing here is exploring some of these newer options. Maybe the drop spindles now offered aren't the best way to do things, but that's why we're discussing it here and running some of these geometry's through a suspension program. Like anything with suspension, there are always trade offs.
