Karter15

Hi there I come from the land down under (australia) and am in the planning process of grafting a complete C6 alloy suspension set up into a dedicated track car,
the track and wheelbase will be very similar although power and weight will be rather different (around 1000hp & 800ft/lbs torque, 50/50 weight split and 1100kgs) have any of you guys that race your cars found any tweaks or weaknesses with the suspension that would require beefier aftermarket parts at all? I feel the stock equipment is of a pretty high standard for what we will be doing, but experience is hard to pick up without the time it takes to earn it.
the factory placement appears to be pretty good for the suspension motion we are after, but there is always room for refinements.
love the forum and I'm still finding my way through some of the great information on it.
keep up the great work and these are a very sexy car.
cheers Craig

parkerracing

Start with brakes and sway bars. Look at all the threads of guys who track their cars. These are common upgrades.

Karter15

thanks parkerracing, will continue looking, we will be utilising bigger brakes and swaybars and all joints will be heim/rose style,
this is a full spaceframe track only vehicle. cheers

bb69

Craig
I built my car around C5 suspension components which are very similar to C6. I haven't found any real problems with the suspension. I have a hunch the anti-dive and ant-squat are much too high for my car, but my car has a MUCH longer wheelbase than a stock Corvette and a lower center of gravity which makes it worse. If you are replacing the stock bushings with heim joints, that will eliminate the other issue, which is the control arms walking on the bushings.

As for brakes, my car weighs about 2120 pounds and makes just over 400HP. The stock brakes work just fine. I can go a full season on a set of brake pads and my cheap parts store rotors last much longer than a full body Corvette. Im my opinion, the biggest reason to swap calipers is because the stock ones do spread. When that happens, I crack rotors in a hurry and get some very heavy taper in the pads.

Finally, the Corvette is known to have a high amount of camber gain when it is lowered from the stock ride height. When you design your car, I would suggest moving the inboard pickup points on the frame so that you can maintain close to the stock control arm angles (front view).

Good luck, and let's see some pictures/drawings of this car.

Ken

jimtway

Make sure you use the ZR1 splindles. The mounting tabs for the brakes are much beefer, and seem to solve the pad taper issues.

ZedO6

If this is a new build with used parts, put the SKF hubs in the car right outta the gate.

Karter15

Hi Ken,
thans for the valuable info, yes we were looking to replace the brakes with aftermarket rotors and calipers in case the rotors spread, which you have validated thank you.
we were also thinking very hard as to run the LG motorsports dropped spindles (uprights) to allow us to lower the car further, we are raising the suspension points up on the frame to allow for proper geometry at the lower ride height.
excellent stuff, much appreciated for your time in giving us some insight to your findings.
thanks again and as below more valuable info on spindles Z51 thank you

Karter15

thank you jimtway,
we will look into these ZR1 spindles
thanks for your valuable input.
cheers

Karter15

thanks zed06, I like your thinking, these also help with pad knock back apparently which always gives you that 'really exciting feeling' into a corner when late braking and the pedal drops further than you wanted it to. hahaha.
cheers
Craig

bosco022

If you are going to use a purpose built tube frame and a drivetrain with more power than a Nascar stock car, why would you want to use stock type Corvette suspension?

In my opinion you would have far more reliability and performance by building along the lines of a Trans Am type car. These would have a coilover set up front and rear with three link rear suspension with a Watts link. If you use 18" wheels you could get some really big rotors and calipers under there. Even with an iron block Nascar type motor these can weigh as little as 2300-2400 dry without ballast.

That said, My car builder, Woody @ Bemco Fabrication has built a couple of tube frame TA type chassis to accept Corvette suspension but they had about 550 HP LS motors and weighed about 2300 with a kinda heavy fiberglass C6 body. He is currently building one (conventional TA type) with a 800 HP Chevy SB2.

Karter15

Hi bosco022,
thanks for your input, there is a method to my madness,
the stock corvette suspension is very light and seems to be quite strong and unsprung weight is a very important part of this build I will be using coil over shocks inboard to keep all the weight in and as low as possible, we have an alloy engine set back 50% of the wheel base and a transaxle in the rear.
there are a few conventional front engine live axle cars like the TA in this field but do not feature in the results very much so we are thinking outside the box as much as possible.
there are some really good handling cars like the corvette that the manufacturer haven't made wholesale changes between models, except for C5 to C6, they have stayed pretty much constant, and GM's development budget is a little more than mine to say the least.

and as for spares it is hard to beat the cost and availability of the corvette equipment.

this class caters for the free thinkers without most of the rules of one make classes so the creative juices can flow, and isn't research and development half the fun of racing, yeah?
cheers