Thanks for your comments! The 3/4" bar does cause some understeer, but
its not too, too bad. The softening of the rear springs was to prevent
axle hop over rough roads and reduce some of the sliding that I was
getting when running my stock rims and tires on the street (not to
mention making the ride much, much better). 1/2 elliptic cars don't
have this problem as they are undersprung in the rear while 1/4 elliptic
cars are oversprung.
Where did you get your 340 lbs. springs? What do you think of the
quality?
I love the axle strap idea. However, I wonder if removing the axle
straps would potentially cause damage to the floorboards or to the
driveshaft. Those axle straps are the only thing that limit movement of
the driveshaft to keep it from hitting the floorboards and some of the
roads, particularly on the way to Summit Point, have short flying
leaps...
I'm using American Racing Libre wheels which were made in the 70's. Not
sure of the offset, but these are a 4 spoke wheel used by a lot of
vintage racers (I got my set from a vintage racer). They are inset a
fair amount requiring 1/4" spacer in front and slight relieving of the
steering ball joint nut and end to fit. The rear took a bit more work.
A panhard rod or watts link is a _must_ and I would bet that poly
bushings in the radius links are also a plus. My car required 3/8"
spacers on the driver's rear side and no spacers on the passenger rear
(go figure). I also took a floor jack and slowly pressed the fenders
out a bit and used an angle grinder to remove about 1/2 of the interior
fender lip. It took a lot of fiddling, but now works just fine. There
is not a lot of clearance, but there is no rubbing. Just as a caution,
it really depends upon your tire width. Some 185 section tires will not
work, others will, I just got lucky in my tire selection. Oh yeah, the
Bridgestone RE71R tires are also NLA, with vintage racers offering to
pay big bucks for anyone who has a new set.
Jackson Zimmermann
jzimmerm@albemarle.org
'64 A-H Sprite
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