I am thinking about redoing the rear suspension on my 89 RS and I was cruising around on summit looking at rear traction bars and sway bar kits and the like when I found this:
http://store.summitracing.com/partde...061+4294848962+
Now, can somebody look at this and tell me if it includes everything that I need, or what else would I need to put it on mine. oh yeah, and is it worth the money?

Thanks!

 

Looks like a torque arm, not a ladder bar.

 

That's a BMR universal torque arm for third gens. It replaces the factory stamped steel torque arm. The BMR torque arm is shorter than a typical torque arm. It's universal as in they use a separate crossmember to mount the torque arm regardless of what transmission is in the car. Other designs such as Spohn, move the front mount into a transmission specific crossmember.

 

Thanks, that explains a lot, so, is there anywhere I could get a ladder bar kit?

 

There is no third gen specific ladder bar kit. When I had ladder bars in my car, they were a universal kit. To make them work, I had to section the rear floor so that the ladder bars could pass through the floor.

Why do you want to change from the torque arm suspension to a ladder bar suspension?

 

Honestly, I don't have a clue, I guess it's just because all you ever hear about is ladder bars and four-link suspensions. part of it is because I really don't know what I want to do, this is my first project car and only the third car I've really worked on, so when I look at what I can do I just start looking at all the possibilities and sometimes I get lost. (I can weld and the like though so I think I'm gonna be ok.)

 

i also want to go from the stock set up to a 4 link or a ladderbar suspension if anyone knows the best way to do this let me know. i want to do that and put in a ford 9inch rear

 

the torqe arm setup works very well, for drag and handling. No real need to do a 4link or ladderbars unless you only wat to go drag racing and want to run massive tires.

For torque arm, check out BMR, UMI, and Spohn. Global west also makes one, its a lot different that the previous, and apparently works very well for handleing applications.

If that is the way you want to go, a 4 link would be best, but requires backhalfing the car, which is very expensive and labor intensive.

 

Personally, I wouldn't go to a 9" unless you really, really need it. A good 12-bolt will handle quite a bit, and a Dana 60 will handle just as much, both w/o robbing as much power to pull.

Unless you are planning to "back-half" the car and run large slicks, you're far better off to stick with the stock suspension. There's guys running in the 6's in the 1/4 with stock suspension and drag radials.