1977 Chrysler Cordoba 360 2bbl
 

Well gentlemen, this car has been my grand parents ever since the good 'ol year of '77. It hasn't been driven much if at all (besides out from under the carport to get a scrubdown) in over 10 years. (My grandfather passed away in 1997 the car was his pride and joy). Grandmother never drove it, let it sit and rot.. poor car.. sat there lookin at the '88 chryslers fifth avenue she drives daily for 10 years...!!:(

Anywhoo the past couple years have seen the front end sag real bad, the k-member of the tranny is less then half inch off the ground, and the front end has no suspension travel.. what looks like happened to me is that the springs gave out, which caused the shocks to fail, and is now sitting on the bump stops.. What do you think?

Are front end parts for these beasts readily available at the parts stores?

Sounds like to me that this has some major RUST issues.

Nobody eh? What holds the front of the car up.. springs right? so if the springs gave out which im sure are original.. then.. swap them out.. new shocks.. good to go or what?

this car won't last much longer but i need to get it 160kms from my grandmothers to my house or she is going to scrap it! :mad:

What do you guys think?

i would like to try my hardest to keep this beauty on the road :)

it will need lots of work that i am happy to do. It's one of the few memories i have of my grandfather and all.. and i would like to keep it around as long as i can.

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...977Cordoba.jpg

From that picture it would not appear that it is sagging. Are the shock mounts rusted through?

i have not been under the car to thoroughly assess the situation..

in that picture the cross member under neath the oil pan or trans is about 1" from the ground.. lol notice the mad camber on the front wheel?

hoe do the shocks mount? are they there own seperate thing.. or do they tie in to the engine bay fenders like say on my 67 mercury??

nothing has come up through anything... it just kinda looks to me like one spring gave out, and then so did the other trying to support all the weight of that 360 :p

You can adjust the camber to a certain point as my driver's side front wheel does the same thing and it is fully adjusted.

I have yet to mess with my front shocks, but I have replacements and they mount into the k member I believe.

well it is a B-body so it has longitudinal torsion bars. you may be able to adjust them up a bit. It almost looks like someone backed off the torsion adjusters on purpose. The adjustment part is a 3/4 bolt mounted in the lower control arm facing straight up. I hope the torsion bars are not completely broken in two but that is a possibility. Normal B-body torsion bars are readily available.

kneel on the bumper and if it doesn't go down you have a spring problem and it is sitting on the control arm stops.

it is not uncommon for the bars to snap or the rear mounting points to rust out.

i would suggest a car trailer if the car is sitting on the control arm stops or you will bend or break something.

The bars could be broken or badly worn, the mounts could be rotted, someone could have backed them off, there could be a problem with the control arms. You need to get hte car up on jack stand and crawl underneither and find out what is going on.

Take some pics if you can and post them up.

2x for pics

I don't think there are springs in the front, at least there aren't any on mine, just the shocks, but I agree on everything else.

No Springs?? Then how does the front end suspension work? lol

Uhm Nope nothing has been adjusted.. car has been in my family since 1977 and been parked since 97 with a few days of being driven in between then and now. Kneeling or pushing down on the front end results in no movement. I would be down there in a heartbeat working on this old girl.. but its at my grandmothers over 150kms away :(

I hate not being able to work on it... i have never touched a wrench to the old girl...

Not sure how it works, but I doubled check and there are only shocks.

commando, i think you have l shaped torsion bars. if you don't have spring, you fall.

It would have nothing to do with the shocks at all, you could pull shocks right off and the ride height would be unaffected. You either have bad Torsion bar bushings, bad torsion bars, or rusted out torsion bar mounts.

K, Since I've already managed to piss-off the local road comissioner by 9;15 this morning, time for me to be nice. Dude, if your'e gonna play with these cars ya got to RTFM. "read the f&^%in manual". That should be your first investment. Put it in the "library" and read as much about your ride as you can. http://www.allpar.com/model/cordoba.html heres your fist lesson. Good luck