Steering upgrade (part 1)

One problem the car has had is that is suffers from a lack of steering lock (because the front wheels hit the bodywork). A dollop of right foot is sufficient to get the car round tight country lanes, but going up a multi-storey car pack requires three point turns at the top and bottom of each ramp, which is irritating at best. So something had to be done.

Fortunately Peter had already realised this was an issue and produced some new, longer front wishbones to move the wheels an extra inch out from the body each side, and so I get to test out the new design. Along with the new wishbones come longer brake hoses, steering rack extensions, and, more controversially, brackets to lower the top shock mount.

Lowering the top shock mount is not something I was originally keen on as it will make the springs slightly closer to horizontal, but it's needed because otherwise the shock will contact the chassis now that the bottom mount has moved out. However, some messing around in Excel shows that they will remain rising rate, and the only real difference is that they'll be effectively about 10% softer, which could easily be sorted with some new springs if I'm able to detect a difference.

So far I've tried three sets of springs at the front (350 lb, as orginally supplied, 650 lb, as recommended by Jason - much too stiff for my liking - and some dual rate springs which were a bit of a punt as they were cheap on Ebay, but these turned out to be unsuitable as the soft bit was fully compressed statically, which wasn't what I was after - so I'm back with 350 at the moment). So messing with springs is par for the course at the moment anyway.

Peter supplied a couple of lowering brackets, but I wasn't really happy with them:

The original bracket. Shock goes in the left hand end, right hand mounts in original top mount location.

Unmodified bracket in place (original top mount is hidden on the other side of the chassis plate). This is only stopped from rocking in/out by edge-to-edge contact between the bracket and the chassis plate it passes through, i.e. on a non-flat area about 6^2 mm

They seem subject to (a) skewing and a general lack of robustness, and (b) rocking back and forth (i.e., pivoting at the original top mount location). After some discussion with Will & others, I decided on welding the crush tube into place, and welding a plate along one edge to prevent skewing, with a second plate coming out at right angles which could bolt onto the chassis, thus ensuring that it couldn't swing around. The second plate remains slightly spaced away from the chassis so the loads are still taken in the original place. A bit of tinkering around and I tacked up this (note: the non-flushness of the L-shaped piece is intentional, to get the right fit against the panel it bolts onto):

Modified bracket tack-welded together. The welds would be better if I hadn't run out of gas. Really.

And Will then welded it properly for me, and with a bit of Hammerite applied it now looks like this:

Modified bracket.

Carrying on, I got most of the other bits done: I made up the connections on the new brake hoses, pressed in the new wishbone bushes, and wedged the new wishbones into their mounts (several hours of cursing and "tapping gently" with my biggest hammer as they're a very tight fit). I also took the steering rack apart and removed the springs which were acting to limit the amount of movement in the rack. Hopefully the longer wishbones will accommodate the full range of motion of the rack - Peter reckons this should be the case; if not then I'll make up some shorter collars, or cut down the springs.

At this point the car is just about ready to put the uprights back on, and then redo the front ride height, camber and toe setup. To be continued as soon as my new nuts and bolts arrive.