G-Rated

Paul Yniguez at Hotchkis started by removing both 18mm nuts in the front and rear of the lower trailing arms.

When going through the frame for the front lower trailing arm nuts, it’s a good idea to wrap some tape (arrow) between the socket and the extension to prevent it from falling into the framerail.

Before installing the new trailing arm, apply a thin layer of the supplied chassis grease to both faces of the bushings. Then add one drop of Loctite on the new bolt threads and torque the nut to 70 lb-ft.

We removed the upper trailing arm the same way we did the lower. However, since our ’Bu had been lowered with a set of Eibach performance springs, we loosened the jam-nut and turned the arm counter-clockwise by one turn to obtain the correct pinion angle of 2-degrees negative.

We also elected not to insert the supplied bushings that are normally replaced in the upper mounting point of the rearend. Doing so would have ruined them later when we transplant them into the new housing we have planned, and since it’s only a pivot point, we knew it wouldn’t cause any ill-handling manners.

In order to position the trailing arm braces, we had to slightly clearance the driver side.

Not a terrible ordeal considering the added structural rigidity would make it well worth the effort.

Something we didn’t notice initially was the fact that our ’Bu never came with a rear sway bar. But now that we have the Hotchkis lower trailing arms, we can also fit the company’s hefty 1-inch sway bar easily with the supplied 5/8-inch bolts.

Seth Millhollin of Edelbrock was our main man when it came time to tossing out the 15-year-old shocks (including the nasty rear coilover units) and installing the IAS units. And, not surprisingly, he even had to whip out a welder to torch out one of them.

There she is in all her glory, just waiting to put on her new sneakers before the big test day. And yes, we know that our muffler is about to fall off.

We’ve built everything from stock 289s to monstrous 496ci blown big- blocks and dumped them into every conceivable four-wheel make, model, and brand—only we’ve never paid much attention to the suspension. That makes us wonder if it really was the ungodly amount of torque that pitched the cars sideways, or if it was the 20-year-old chassis that we were putting those engines into.

With that fresh on our minds, we’ve taken a different angle with our project ’78 Malibu. We’ve also done quite a bit to it since we first introduced the ’Bu back in June ’01 (“The Ultimate Malibu”). We got rid of the dreadful factory 10.5-inch disc brakes up front and upgraded to the larger 12-inch 1LE rotors (see “Big-Brake,” Sept. ’01), completely rebuilt the frontend, and started to modify the suspension with the aid of Hotchkis Performance. So far the results have been incredible. The brakes feel better than any we’ve ever used before.

And even though we had only partially completed the front half of the suspension and were driving with mix-matched wheels, “wow” really says it best. Of course, our reaction might have something to do with the fact that we’re just not used to driving anything that can actually turn or stop at full speed.

For this segment of As the Malibu Turns, we had Hotchkis Performance install the final portion of the rear suspension. This included the upper and lower trailing arms, trailing arm braces, and a 1-inch sway bar. We then finished the suspension road-trip by stopping at Edelbrock and having the clapped-out stock shocks replaced with trick Inertia Active System (IAS) shocks (see the Shocking Facts sidebar). The only glitch was that we had to steal the Fire-Turd’s wheels and tires because our Wheel Vintique set wasn’t ready in time for our intensive slalom and skidpad testing. But don’t fret—once we get the BFGoodrich g-Force TA tires mounted, we’ll try a few more things to improve our current times. Read on to see how our portly sedan is now able to embarrass many big-dollar production cars.