Dave H. wrote:
> To bring you up to speed, I have the full rear suspension from a '77 Spit
> and have real bad negative camber on my '66 Herald. We tried the cable
> trick to compensate but the camber is too severe. So it's time to change
> the spring.
> I like the idea of a swing spring because it is a "newer" technology.
> After rolling the last one because of that flaw, I want to make sure (as
> best I can) to make sure it doesn't happen again.
>
>
Do you really want to do this? Fitting a Spitfire spring will not get
rid of negative camber, the spring simply won't be up to the job of
carrying a Herald around! I fitted a brand new Heavy Duty swing spring
(John Kipping conversion) to my 64 1200 saloon, which gave it quite a
degree of negative camber (which I wanted), with reduced ride height. I
can't imagine how low and soft a Spitfire sprung Herald would be.
Aside from this, the main differences in rear axles are that the later
Spitfires had halfshafts around one inch longer (using these shafts will
give you even greater negative camber!). You should be okay for
wheelarch clearance provided you use standard 4.5" or 3.5" Herald wheels
with tyres of 155 section or less. Go above this and you may have
clearance problems. Also, you'll need to increase the number of shims in
the rear Tie-rod mountings - I don't know how many though. The flanges
are larger on the later Spitfires too, so you'll either have to fit
those from the Herald shafts, or fit the differential output shafts from
the Spitfire, though early Heralds have a thinner output shaft, which
would mean changing the whole diff. Good luck, but make sure the result
is what you really want,
Bill Davies.
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=====U==============U===== 1959 Herald 948 Coupe
\________________________/ 1964 Herald 1200 Saloon
| | | | 1966 Herald 1200 Convertible
|_| |_| 1959 Standard Atlas Pickup
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