Jeff,
Did you find any damage resulting from the pothole? All I thought you
described was wear. I'd want to know what caused the change in your
handling before breaking it down too far.
As far as safe front spring removal, my prefered method is to extract two
spring pan bolts diagonally across from each other (after jacking up the
car and puting it on stands of course). Take two pieces of threaded
(someone hates that term) rod abiut 8" long. Lock two nuts together on the
end of each rod. Insert the rods into the vacant holes in the spring pan.
Put a barrel nut (a long nut) on the other end and tighten it down.
Remove the other two bolts. Then back out the barrel nuts on the rod a
little at a time until the tension is off.
It probably isn't as fast as the floor jack method but it is very safe as
long as you take your time.
Point 2 if you have a bugeye the stock king pins are a little smaller. (A
few snapped off under stress so they got beefed upon the MKII Sprite.) So
if you are converting back from wires to disks for a bugeye make sure you
know which size king pin to get. I couldn't find a shop with the special
stepped tool to ream the king pin bushes in one pass for the smaller king
pins. Instead a local machine shop had to do in 2 passes with two sizes of
reamers. That definitely took some skill to do a good job.
Much luck, Herb G.
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