Improving the ride

Lessons learnt

I told Pete what had happened, and he gave me a shopping list to buy to improve the handling of the car:

• New front and rear shocks;
• Rear disc brakes;
• Lowering kit;
• Front and rear anti-roll bars;
• New heat exchangers;
• New petrol tank;
• Electronic ignition;

After about £1100, I had all the bits I needed, and we arranged to start fitting it in November.

Yet more changes

In disassembling the car, Pete found that the front wasn't very strong at all - just two pieces of angle iron bolted to the front beam held the fibreglass in place. This slightly shocked me, as I used to stand in the front while working on the car!. His solution was to build a big steel bucket to keep it in place. This would also replace the breeze blocks that I was using to put weight in the front!

In addition, while the rear of the car was in bits, we decided to paint everything (gearbox, trailing arms, exhaust), and get the engine recoated. Here are some images of the work in progress:

The engine looked superb when it was done:

All this work took about 6 weeks to complete, but at the end of it, the car was looking much better - lower, sleeker, and handling very much better - most corners can be taken at speed limits.

Another new dashboard

I decided at this time to put a different dashboard in, this time using turned aluminium as the backing.

Back up