For those who might be interested, below is a portion of an e-mail that I received from the President of Pedders, USA. I have already done the springs, but not sure how much further I will go with it. Ball park figure for the complete suspension swap, including installation at a Pedders shop,is about $4700. Final pricing hasn't been set yet. If interested, PM me and I'll pass on contact info.

We replace 32 OE bushes with 26 urethane steel jacketed bushes and 6 urethane bushes. We add castor and camber adjustment range to the front and rear, replace the sway bays, sway bar bushes and endlinks, finally we replace the OE dampers and coils resulting in an AMG on a Chrysler budget. In the OE design there is 9mm of bump steer resulting in a large range of castor and camber changes under load. We reposition the rack with an eccentric style urethane and steel mount, physically dropping the rack 4mm. This results in a reduction to only 3mm of bump steer with a much tighter range in castor and camber. The car is amazing with better ride quality than the OE drama at every bump.

dave

 

I missed this thread Dave... nice information, especially the bushing swapping.

I guess for a complet rip and replace that isn't a bad price tag, just a little out of my range right now

 

$4700? Ouch! Hopefully I can find someone at a regional LX meet who has had the kit done to see how it compares to the existing coilover/sway combos which are about 50%-70% of the cost.

 

Yeah, kind of out of my range, too. Get this, though - if I could have gotten my car there in time, they wanted to use it as the installation demo car, and I could have gotten the whole pack for free! But I couldn't get things arranged in time [:@]. I'm hoping to be able to at least get the new shocks and struts.

dave

 

I know the feeling... I was supposed to be the test vehicle for the Hotchkis Stage II/sway kit, but I was told that they needed to hold off for a few weeks for the xmas holidays last year - when january rolled around and I called back to see what was up, they had brought in someone else for the test fit and never bothered contacting me, so I got shafted.

 

It looks like it goes way benyond the springs/struts/shocks/sways. It also replaces 32 bushings with urethane ones, replaces endlinks and droping the stearing rack.

No bushings are replaced with coilover kits and no sway kit that I have seen uses this quality of bushings, even at that there are only 4 bushings for both front and rear sway bars.

 

I'm not doubting that it may be a better kit in the long run, I'd just be curious to drive a car with each kit to see how much of a difference could be felt while driving to see whether it was worth the extra cost up front.

 

[sm=smiley20.gif]I wanted to make sure we were not comparing this to a normal coilover and sway swap. Those urethane bushings alone will make a difference.

 

Peter, the President of the US part of the company, e-mailed me with a video of the upper control arms. They put one in a vice holding where the bushings were. Then they did the same with the urethane bushings - BIG difference!

They will soon (haven't checked in a while) have the prices on their website - it looks like you can buy only what you want cause it lists all the separate bushings and shocks and struts, etc. - all separately. It may be that its the labor that is the most expensive part of the thing. Remember, that price I gave above was an installed price by a Pedders dealer.

dave

 

That’s cool, if we take the suspension apart and find a place to press the bearings then it will more than likely be much cheaper.

I’d be interested in the bushing and rack adjustment bracket by themselves.