Inside Detroit Speed: Making Muscle Car Suspension Parts & World Class Custom Builds!

you guys know what they're doing this isn't like some robot mig weld garbage paint over it like you see some places don't you don't see welds like that on production parts you just don't you know why did you do this it was a sema build like you said just cuz yeah all the just the custom brackets on the exhaust and the little isolators on there yeah how many hours go into a build like this uh those are stamped here in the us oh the ninja star bin here we go if you have rubber in here and it starts flexing well that's no good you know now your geometry is all out basically the customer just has to locate it in the car and it fits perfectly we are at the world headquarters of detroit speed which is in not detroit where are we we're in north carolina uh mooresville that is where nascar is really and that's where we're at today so we'll give you a tour come on in this is matt butz how's it going he's uh our project manager uh we usually have anywhere from like 10 to 12 projects going at a time all the heavy fab happens over here basically start with a bare shell strip down sandblasted and build the vehicles up from there first one here is a 70 dodge charger basically a modern representation of a daytona so uh when we do vehicle builds that don't necessarily uh we have that we don't have supporting products for we still have stuff that we can use so like this one for instance it's actually got our hydroformed camaro subframe in it so these cars are originally unibody we cut the front end off and marked flips the camaro stuff ran in these are all like customer cars customer builds everything in here are customer builds um every now and then we'll have a shop car too so like the fox buddy mustang that's a shots are for development uh they're the rear suspension is already to market they're wrapping up the front suspension so a lot of that stuff will be available pretty quick and then the other one like that uh the blue square body there that's another shop vehicle for development so i have a few of those things floating around every now and then but for the most part uh customer projects like you said a 70 chevelle here falls working on so it's got our universal pouring pieces in the bag a lot of stuff kind of modified to work it's kind of a combination of scratch built parts and off the shelf parts to give us the the whole quarter link assembly and then of course the jri coilovers most everything we build on this side over here ends up with a ford nine inch you know everybody wants big powers that pretty much is the axle of choice so again instead of doing our bolt-on front suspension we cut the frame off and clipped this whole frame assembly in here so it gets you better geometry gets you the you know the late model style forged aluminum upright and that's your own part too yep so we have this forged they come in as a blank and we machine them in the machine shop which you'll see back in production here shortly so yeah that's totally completely our part it's based off of corvette style hub pack corvette brake mounting you know your your brake options for that assembly are basically everything under the sun and check out the assembly shop some of the detail on this stuff is just ridiculous yeah so a lot of that stuff you see you know a lot of sheet metal parts and everything it's just totally one-off hand fabricated [Music] this used to be uh what i'm pretty sure was the old mb2 nascar shop with the the 36 eminem's skittles car in the late 90s what's going on in here so this is the assembly side of the shop and then of course the body shop down at that end so got cars in various stages over here this one is fresh out of the body shop jason's just now getting going on wiring it's been laying in the trunk for like a week wiring battery cables and fuses and all kinds of stuff like that are you having fun back there so you know we usually have a car in the body shop and a couple in different stages of assembly like i said this one's getting started on wiring yeah what about this one here so anybody that's followed our stuff they've seen this we finished this car several years back 70s as well so with the sema kind of did some of the good guy shows and stuff like that it's got an lsx with a four liter whipple on it so uh runs pump gas e85 made like 750 on pump gas and then 980 185 so pretty pretty healthy what uh production pieces does this car have on it uh so this one has some of our control arms coilovers most every build we do in the project shop it's based around our product uh you know in some way shape or form if we don't offer a product for it we will modify a product and use on it you guys do like all kinds of stuff wiper kits and radio knobs and stuff this does not suspension yeah so we offer a lot of wiper kits and uh electric headlight kits so this one's got um those knobs that you saw back in production those are in this car we're gonna go check that stuff out after this the whole where all this stuff gets made is the building right next to this one there's all kinds of stuff in here this is just like the the polished uh customer build area so this mustang here is basically finished up ready to ship home so it'll leave in the next week or two you've got microfibers under the pads yeah yeah you got to take care of them so yeah this one this one's basically waiting on final detail and uh beyond that it's ready to be loaded up and uh sent to california this thing's freaking ridiculous all the just the custom brackets on the exhaust and the little isolators on there all the stainless lines there's a lot of details you know people don't realize one thing we really like to do in regards to like the stainless lines is we always pocket the floorboard so that these lines aren't hanging below the floor same thing with your fuel here the mustangs they the floorboard hangs real low so we pocket that stuff up to keep it up out of the way nice v-bands everywhere wow and seeing stuff like this just makes me hate everything i've ever had for a car i don't know i just can't i can't even fathom how long it takes somebody to do this like to just drill and tap that right there just for that one little spot and then to make the line it's just how many hours go into a build like this uh usually about 3 000 on average is about the quickest build we do and then stuff like that chevelle it's more complicated it could take longer than that it's got our mini tubs in it you know stock you could probably fit like a 255 tire on the back of these and we've got 315s on the back now so now that we've seen the finished product we're going to go back to the origins see where the products start on the computer and then we'll go out to the um machine area where they actually get made all of our parts here at detroit speed start off with um one of the eight engineers that we have on staff here so they will start from scratch they'll get cad data from the original frame the original car inner fenders whatever the restriction of the suspension might be floor pans and so on they'll scan that into their system here um in the cad and then they'll build the suspension around it um we do more than one level of suspension we'll do an entry level affordable entry uh kit good geometry improvements and then we'll do the macdaddy all out where we'll do a full frame a hydroform frame um or in a lot of cases a front cradle so uh pete one of our engineers here he worked on the c10 front suspension for us this is our our test car that we have so this is the mack daddy as we call it the the big speed max that we came out with so this kit you get a lower cradle upper and lower control arms a rack and pinion a new forged spindle that is a drop spindle it comes with a hub pack set up coilover kit and a new front sway bar so everything you need to do and the the nice thing about this kit is it bolts right into the car right into that truck how many times does solidworks crash on you a day uh at least i don't know it depends on what build we're on i stayed on the old build so it only crashes like twice but lake over here he got up to what service pack four and it only crashes like what six times a day yeah something like that i think so many people have a record something that we do here at detroit speed is all of our forgings and our castings are all done here in the u.s so on this particular c10 we have our steer arm right here it's forged steel our upright right here it's forged aluminum and then even on this kit we have a cast iron upper shock mount so that's something that we do here at detroit speed that's a lot different than what our competitors do so so these guys up here all design everything once they approve it and they got it done and they're happy with it they'll kick it down to us down in production and we'll head that way right now to building two all right that's the cool part so this building's our manufacturing building so the first part first spot is uh the shipping department so this is where we box everything up so over here is where we pre-package everything jeff right now he's boxing up the aluminum frame so he actually has the bigger frame that you just saw underneath that mustang actually in this box this is box one of seven for this kit so he's boxing it up you can see right here some of our frames that we do most of them are serialized so we track where they go who they go to what spring rate what shock rate they got so um it's number 440 so he's got this in here with these expandos it's the new version of uh the peanuts you can recycle them they're nice they don't cling to you they don't blow away in the wind so um so these guys and gals will get everything boxed up and they'll get it up on the shelves ready to ship out the customers and also the warehouse distributors like your summits your jags your motor space but we'll see where it first starts which is the machine shop so here's some components before we get to the machine shop that are ready to get packaged this is the caster camber plate for third-gen camaros it's got our speed align design on it this is patented so it's not just a slot with a bolt in it and you got to adjust it and hope you're good and tighten it up and hope it never moves these little chinese throwing stars you can rotate them in 16 increments so it grabs the grooves at a little bit of a different spot every time you got it yeah that's really cool so here's a pair of control arms ready to get packaged right here these are a body uppers so if you got yourself a monte carlo chevelle ready to go on i have one of those those are easy bolt-ons noted the bracketry ready to get packaged here's the illuma frame right here that jeff's pulling from these are all machined ready to go they're already um tagged serialized and then some more up lowers so that's the white mustang that was on the lift this is the front cradle that's under that car this looks like some oem type stuff that's kind of what we're big on here kind of like he said a lot of forgings this is a casting in this case some of our corvette suspension products they have castings as well so i mean it is basically a lot of oe quality brought to the old muscle car type stuff you know yeah so when we designed the mustang the first generation mustang suspension you know we looked at doing our own cradle and just doing cheap glitter fan uh welding it together fabricating it you know and we kind of analyzed it and said you know that's going to take some time what are the oe oems doing so on the rear of the corvette their suspension on c6 c7 c8 it's all cast aluminum and it's cradles that holds up to it so we said hey let's bring that to the aftermarket let's try that let's do that let's be different let's bring new technology different ways to manufacture to this aftermarket so we looked at what they were doing we have contacts there we were able to see what chemical properties the structural integrity of the oem cradle is and we applied that to our front cradle so this is the lower cradle it'll hold up to the bottom of the frame rail and then we got an upper control arm mount that goes on there again it's cast aluminum a coilover mount goes down there that's cast aluminum um the adjustments on that are just like you saw those little chinese throwing stars the speed of line um on this too there's a spindle for our e-bodies that we manufacture it's forged in the u.s so we bring them in house we'll machine them do our ball joints uppers and lowers for steer arms locations here um we'll do a rough turn on the spindle we'll send it out and get it heat treated and then we'll come back and we'll do a final turn on our bearing surfaces right here this only works with our setup so it is a tall spindle um when we designed it we couldn't get enough geometry out of the a body uh uppers and lowers so we had to make our own spindle so it's about an inch and a half or so taller than the factory now that has to do with whenever you see the chevelle's monte carlo and stuff on drag strips and they do a wheelie the front wheel they're always like because the the way the suspension travels and when they turn it like grabs the wrong side of the tire it's like yeah yeah i'm very familiar with why those things handle like garbage it's our machine shop so we got two cnc lays three mils so over here matt just got done running our spindles so this is a raw forging all right it's aluminum this is our left hand upright all right you just saw that on those cars that matt showed you they were on both those chevelles it was on that mustang also so this is how it comes to us right here it's got our logo in it it's made in the usa it's got our part number on it we'll get we have multiple fixtures in here that will run this on there and we'll locate again the upper ball joint lower ball joint the three holes right here for the hub pack and then these holes for our steer arm and then caliper mount dude those use the corvette hub pack yep yep so on the illuma frame we can offer both a forward bolt pattern and a gm bolt pattern of as far as the hub pack goes over here sean's running these steel bushings right here something real simple oh that's the exciting stuff yeah bushings so he's running about 1200 of them so these go on all of our lower control arms four per car so he's got a tight tolerance on the id that he has to keep and we'll see these in a little bit where we weld them onto a control arm so this is our welding shop so in here this is where we do all the dirty work all the fun stuff we're welding everything that we produce here they're running uh roll cages right now so this is a second gen camaro roll cage that they're bending up so they're dialing the angles right now making sure it's within spec once they get it bent they'll bend them all and then they'll cut the ends it's something that we do differently a lot of roll cages you buy out there in the aftermarket world they're just straight tubes you got to fit into your car you got to cut it and you only got one shot of cutting and fitting it in your car both cut it most of these angles that we're cutting are compound so it's dual angles so basically the customer just has to locate in the car and it fits perfectly interesting i didn't know you guys had roll cage kits yup so on that vendor we went we bend all of our roll pages we bend all of our roll cages and we bend all of our sway bars on here's our frame area right here you can see this is the x-gen 595 so this is what man showed you under those chameles so it is just like our subframe we've got the same cross members the primary upper and lower the secondary upper and lower and those are stamped here in the us we bring them in here and then we'll locate them in this picture and weld them onto the frame rails right here and then we'll hang all of our suspension locations on our upper control arm out our coil over mount and then our lower control arm mounts it's 2x4 right here so you can graft it into any car you got so this is a 595 we call it xgen 595 and what that means is from hub to hub it's 59.5 inches so that'll fit a lot of trucks uh that'll fit your a-bodies and all that we also offer a five-three-five again which is 53 and a half inches hooked up so that'll fit kind of your smaller cars so the guys back here against the back wall they got all ventilation to them so it pulls all the fumes out when they're welded but we're welding from bracketries here these are coilover mounts that go onto the frames to control arms so between brackets and control arms themselves and weld over there this pile right here these are uh our c3 our corvette front cradles a lot of the stuff we have a wealth pattern that we do do our homework we note it and then everyone welds it the same way that way we always have the same product coming out because it doesn't warp a certain way and all that yeah so these holes here all locate to the bottom of the factory chassis and then right here these are tie downs that's convenient yep so we put those in there for the guys that way with their if they do have the trailer the car they're able to these get painted or powder coated or these get powder coated most everything we do is powder coated uh electroplated uh or e-coated so you gotta twirl it around and stuff you mentioned the tow hooks but that's kind of something that a lot of people overlook building cars we offer all these and some of our other products as well because everybody wants a super low awesome looking car and then nobody considers it until you try to put on the trailer for the first time so something we try to integrate into most of our product at this point that's really helpful i want to start putting tow hooks on my stuff with the amount of times it goes on and off the trailer it just makes life easy you just slap it on and you're done so not worried about damaging wheels or subframes any of that stuff these are all control arms that are ready to go to powder coat the uh lower control arm so it goes into that cradle we just saw so that's that bushing we just saw in the machine shop so we got pictures that locates all this gussets sway bar mount ball joint pocket the guys you know going a certain order and weld this up that way it comes out the same way every time this is some really good looking wells too yeah those are pretty look at that roll of times these guys know what they're doing this isn't like some robot mig weld garbage paint over it like you see some places this is like almost too pretty to cover wow so that's something that we do versus our competitors out there we tig weld all of our control arms so every one of them stick welding is any of the welding automated no not here that's really cool all of our wells are man done here with these guys wow that's awesome did you guys build your own racks and fixtures and everything in here too yep so once the engineers draw everything up they'll go back and they'll make all of our fixtures so it's not just some guy down in the shop with some scrap angle iron that makes fixtures here we spend just as much time designing the fixtures to locate everything make it repeatable make it easy for us to use so that way a part going in and out a thousand times it's the same every time just even this cart here with the handle and the hooks and the bins like how it's all purpose-built too yeah it's almost just as fascinating to me to see the the pieces used during the manufacturing process that is the actual parts that they carry or hold right it's just like a whole other facet to it that no one thinks about when i when i see videos out there or i see magazines out there um i kind of look behind the actual article or what's what's being presented and see how the shops are set up see exactly what you're pointing out right there their carts their fixtures um how they do stuff you know that's what's fascinating to me so for a guy like 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