Upgrading 1975 Chevy Laguna Front Suspension - Brace Yourself!

The G-Plus lower arms come next. You can see the spring cup in the center of the control arm; it's shaped to take a coil, and has a pocket for a pigtail. The spring cup rotates, which helps you clock the spring for an even ride height. The lower arms also come with spherical heim-joint-equipped, adjustable-length endlinks for your sway bar, or an aftermarket one like Global West's SB-883.

OK, so not everything here is bolt-in; some of it is hammer-on. A selection of multi-directional inertial transfer devices are helpful for guiding the control arm bushings into the chassis mounts so that the new bolts can be slipped through. The brake caliper only looks like it's hanging by the brake line--it's supported by a coat hanger off camera.

When installing the new springs (or even the old springs), be careful to line the end of the spring with the pocket in the upper cup. The Global West's spring cup can then be adjusted to receive the lower pigtail. Short springs like the Global West pieces are generally safer to install than long ones, but caution should always be observed.

Baer Brakes' bumpsteer kit has a hexagonal wrench surface for easy adjustment of toe-in. The real purpose of the bumpsteer kit--having the ability to adjust the height of the endlink at the spindle--is actually being hidden by Eric's hand. In principle, you want the arc of the steering end link to mimic that of the lower control arm through the suspension's range of travel. This prevents any phantom steering input.

With most of the parts installed, we dropped her down on all fours, and took a measurement from the ground to the top of the wheel well. It was 27 inches, or about 2 inches higher compared with the baseline measurement we started with. Three hours later, we had the front springs cut to the desired ride height--about 25 inches. Take note: this is the difference between your car looking like Floyd the barber and Conan the Barbarian.

The double-adjustable Stocker Star shocks from QA1 are wider than stock (given the rather large adjusting knobs), and may not fit through all lower control arms without modifying the control arm opening. With that said, the Global West G-Plus arms were designed to swallow the Stocker Stars whole. You'll need to take a stab at your compression and rebound settings before installing them--we picked "8" for compression, and "4" for rebound. We'll be going stiffer than this when we hit the track, but these setting were perfect for street driving.

Before hitting the road, lube all the zerk fittings with a quality chassis lube. We like the synthetic Royal Purple Ultra Performance Grease for the kind of punishment we'll be dealing. Royal Purple EP lube has Synslide additive technology, which provides maximum protection under boundary lubrication conditions typically caused by heavy shock load conditions. In simple words: metal to metal, bad. Pedal to metal, good.

Installing the Global West SB-883 front sway bar is supposed to be easy, but Eric's face tells the story. We wrestled with the end links because in cutting the springs so short, we bought ourselves some difficulty in the sway bar install department. No worries, we got it handled.

A quality alignment by someone who knows performance alignments is an absolute necessity after a major front suspension overhaul like this. Earlier in the day, we also took the time to replace the drag link and inner tie-rod ends with new pieces. We kept the old idler arm and Pitman arm since they were good to go.