>From my own personal experience with a quarter-elliptic square body Sprite,
the car oversteers like a demon, even with stiff poly bushings in a rebuilt
rear suspension. There are several solutions to this issue.
1. Soften the rear springs (a good idea since the quarter-elliptic cars are
way oversprung in the rear). I removed the 3 shortest leaves on my car, its
lower but still streetable. You probably could remove up to 4 leaves for
the street, but it might be too soft at that point, still its free and not
too hard to experiment with if everything is not rusted.
2. Install a panhard rod. A necessity for wider tires and rims on a square
body car. Keeps the rear planted firmly, no more waiting for it to catch.
3. Stiffen the front. 540lbs front springs are a bit strong for the
street. The stock chassis, while strong, is now taking a significant amount
of punishment unless you have a cage to stiffen it up. I'm running 340lbs
springs and they work just fine. I would highly recommend these springs to
even non-enthusiast drivers.
4. Adjust tire pressure. This is the fine tuning method, usually after you
do the first three.
I've done all the above. Along with slightly heavier Neo synthetic oil in
the shocks, 1.5" spacers under the front shocks to improve camber (yes, I
know that it raises my front roll center, but this is minor for
street/occasional autox use), offset front bushings for yet more camber, all
poly bushings everywhere around, wider rims and DOT approved road racing
tires (Bridgestone RE71R), and a fine alignment setup. My autox times have
dropped about 10 seconds on a 1 minute run, after I finally cured my fuel
cutout issues due to increased cornering forces...
Jackson Zimmermann
jzimmerm@albemarle.org
'64 A-H Sprite (1275, 5-speed, still waiting for me to install the race
head...for 9 months now...)
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