I have a 71 Pontiac LeMans with stock suspension.  I want to set the car up to really handle all the twisties I can throw at it.  I was looking on several website that sell suspension components for my car but I don't know the best way to go with it.  Does anyone know of a good company/s to get rear control arms, front A arms, coil springs from?  Do I really need adjustable rear upper control arms?  How about a complete coilover set up?  Also would a quick ratio  steering box help with the handling?   I have a question about the brake too but I will save it for later. Thanks all, I appreciate all the help.  

I can't help you will all of it...as I haven't gotten that far with my 68 Cutlass...but I did get a set of Hotchkiss 1" drop springs and I love them.  Also I have an 80's Monte Carlo SS steering box in my car...for $50 from a junk yard you really cant beat it.  Its about 3 turns lock to lock with pretty good feel.

Good luck.

Hotchkis makes a bunch of stuff for your car, it's the same as the Chevelles of that era. The upper adjustable control arms are nice to have if you have lowered your car in order to re-align your pinion angle. I was able to just remove my upper control arm shims to realign my Impala when I lowered it 1 1/2 inches.

I had custom springs made 1 1/2 lower and 20% more rate by Detroit Eaton spring. Polyeurathane bushings front and rear. I boxed my rear control arms. KYB Gas-a-just shocks on the corners. All this helped my 65 Impala handle 100% better over stock. I still need a thicker front sway bar and a adjustable rear pan hard bar. A really good alignment by someone who knows more than just reading a manual is really helpful.

If you really want to set your car up to handle you need to get a book on suspensions.  It's a whole lot cheaper than trying suspension components.  Now for what little I know.  Suspension is all about roll centers and roll couples and slip angles.   Factory suspensions are set up to understeer by design as this is more controllable by inexperienced drivers (that would probably be you at this point).  The next thing you need to do is to take the flex out of the suspension mounts this can be done with polyurethane or Del-a-lum bushings all around.  You will give up ride comfort by doing this but everything has it's price.  There is also an inherent advantage to rear steering (where the steering arm is behind the spindle) but you've got what you've got.  The next thing you want to do is to limit body roll to about 2 deg. in corners.  This is essentially done with sway bars and springs.  There are two schools of thought on this one - big bars and soft springs or small bars and big springs.  They both get you to about the same place but the small bar big springs set-up will ride stiffer.  I opted for the big bar soft spring set-up in my 79 camaro.  I got, I believe, a 1 5/16" sway bar from Herb Adams VSE for my Camaro.  The reason is that I wanted to keep as much ride comfort as I could.  The next thing you need to get is a panhard (track) bar for the rear of the car or a watts linkage.  This keeps the rearend of the car centered in hard cornering.  At this point you are probably ready for some testing.  The first thing you need to do is to find or make a skip pad and get a polaroid or digital camera.  A skip pad is nothing more than a 200 ft diameter circle around which you drive your car.    The reason for the camera is to take a picture of the car as it goes around the skid pad to see how much body roll there is.  If is it more than about 2-2.5 deg. you need to stiffen the front springs or sway bar (remember the big bar, small bar stuff).  The next thing you need to do is to set the tire pressures.   You do this by setting them to the recommended pressues and the getting out on the freeway for about 5 miles at speed.  After a good long straight stretch (1-2 miles) stop the car and take tire temp readings on the two outer edges and the center of the tire.  If the outer edges are hotter you need to add air if the center is hot you need to lower the pressure.  Repeat this test until the tires are the same all of the way accross.  This is you tire pressure, write it down.   The reason that this is important is that you will use tire temp to set the camber on the front end.  You then need to go back to the skip pad and make a few hard circuits stop, and take tire temps.  If the outside is hot you need to lean the tire in more at the top, if the inside is hot you need to push the tire out more at the top.  Repeat this until the temps are pretty much the same all the way across the tire.  It time for red-green now so I'll post more tomorrow.  

I forgot to mention that my 71 has a super front end kit from PST, with all the polyurithane bushing and tierod end and such.  I would also say that I am some-what of an experienced driver,  I can actually handle a car in a skid and I love oversteer.  I am not saying I am some pro but living in northern Minnesota in the snow you have to learn how to control an out of control car.  Now you were saying that I need a panhard bar?  Is that something that I am going to have to make myself or do you know of anyone that owuld make one for my car?  That does make a lot of sense now that you say that because there is a lot of force on the rear suspension components during hard cornering.  Also do you think I should get the biggest sway bars that I can find?  I am not overly concerned about ride quality, since this is not a daily driver.  I saw a set of hotchkis sway bars on the PST website today a 1 3/8" light weight hollow for the front and a 1" solid for the rear.  They also have a set of 1" drop springs.  You think these would be stiffer that new stock springs?  

My Impala has a Pan hard bar from the factory. I put one on my 73 Impala that I got from Chassis Engineering. It's a weld on universal type. It was like $125. I set it up with a little preload in it to get rid of the understeer that monster had loads of it.  

The hotchkiss 1" drop springs are stiffer than stock springs are.  

Continuing with yesterday's post before I get to your reply, did I mention that you need to go around the skid pad in both directions and take tire temps in both directions.  You are more worried about the outside tire because it carries more of the load but don't forget the inside tire.  The ideal to be acheived is to have the front tires the same temp all the way across on both wheels but this is probably not possible - you probably need to settle for the outside tire and let the inside tire do what it will.  BTW you should probably ask the folks that made your front end bushings what they recommend for toe-in as it will change if you have new stiffer bushings.  Just for reference, a racecar that has steel bushings (and thus no deflection) in the a-arms will usually like 1/16 to 1/8 in. of tow OUT.  This is contrary to what you normally see in a RWD street car as the static alignment allows for a-arm bushing compression while the car is moving.  This adds to toe out which results in a little toe out when you are moving.  I'm thinking that you probably want to try either straight up or 1/16 toe in with poly bushings but ask PST they should know.  Now for the rearend.  Like I said there is probably some understeer built into your car and some of it will probably be in the rear suspension.  In a leaf spring car this is done by having the pivots for the rear springs angle slightly upward from front to back.  This built in understeer is cured by moving the front spring perch up by about an inch and moving the rear spring perch down so they are about level when you are done.  If I remember right you have a trailing arm suspension.  This has built in understeer by the trailing arms being slightly up at the rfront when the car is at ride height.  You can "correct" this by either lowering the front swing arm pivot (lots of work) or slightly lowering the rear  end (with shorter springs) when the car is at ride height.  You will probably also want to install a sway bar to keep the rear as flat as possible in corners.  Typically rear sway bars are quite a bit smaller than front bars.  Once you have all of this installed you can test the car on the skid pad again and look for understeer or oversteer.  If you have understeer you can try lowering the rear end a little bit more to fix it, or try a stiffer sway bar.  If you have oversteer you can fix it by raising the rear ends slightly (think of spacers) or try a softer sway bar.  Once you get the over/understeer right there are other things you can work on such as bumpsteer corner weighting etc.  These are lengthy subjects in themselves.  This is just something to get you thinking about what you are going to be dealing with.  Handling is probably the most difficult thing to get right on a car as it involves ever-changing roads, road surfaces and other variables.  Your objective with all of this is to get the car to handle in neutral manner - neither over or understeering when in a corner hard.

Now to your particular project.  I would talk to the various suspension component companies and ask them what they have to offer.  You have a good start with the PST suspension poly bushings.  Now what you need to do is to deal with the sway bars and the front end alignment.  I would probably buy the front and rear bar from the same company and possibly the springs and upper a-arms too as they have lots more experience with this stuff than either you or I do.  I would think that they have worked out the balance between the sway bars, springs, shocks and other components so their parts work fairly well with each other.  Once you get some experience with the car you can pick and choose other components as you like.   I would also get some basic tools for suspension work.   If you are really serious a set of wheel scales is essential along with a caster/camber gauge and a set of toe plates.  I know that the wheel scales are expensive it you get the electronic Intercomps but you can also but you can also find hydraulic scales that are significantly cheaper.  I bought mine used for about $100.  The hydrauylic scales usually have gauges that are accurate to 50 lbs. which you can interpolate to about 25 lbs.  If you figure about 1000 lbs per wheel this will give you accuracy of 2.5%.  You can also use grain scales if you can get you hands on 4 of them (ask you farmer friends if you know any).  Anyway, you have lots of fun and lots of work ahead of you but if you get a nice handling car it will be the envy of all of your friends if they want to do more than simply go fast in a straight line (not that there is anything wrong with that).  A couple of books you might want to buy are "How to make your car handle" by Fred Puhn and "Chassis Engineering" by Herb Adams (he designed the 2nd gen. camaro/Firebird chassis).  You might also want to contact Matt Adams VSE at (831)659-7660.  I don't think he makes anything for your car (he basically does did firebird and camaro stuff and a really hot Cobra kit car) but he might know who makes ther best stuff for it.  Good luck and check my info in the books especially the stuff on the rear end to make sure this feeble mind hasn't screwed something up as I am working from memory.  

P.S. as to your driving, I wasn't trying to be insulting it's just that most of us, me included, are probably not as skilled a driver as we would like to believe we are.  I know what you mean about the snow though I live in Michigan and do my share of sideways driving every winter.

Good luck and keep us posted it sounds like a neat project.