>Something else I'd kinda like to do, mayby. I have seen a picture
>of a Spridget with an fiberglass bonnet, similar in design to the bugeye,
>but with flush mounted headlights. Slick. I suppose I could get a Frogeye
>bonnet and do a little fiberglass work... Too bad my front wings are in such
>good shape.
Sounds like the Speedwell bonnet. Some friends of mine are
reproducing these; they've gone to the trouble of making
molds and body bucks off an original. There are actually
two versions, a long-nose and a short-nose. The long-nose
has three openings, kinda like a 250 GTO Ferrari (there's
a central oval with two triangular openings for brake ducts
on either side of the middle one). The other one has just
the central oval, kinda like a cross between an E Type and
a Lotus Elite.
Speedwell made two headlight treatments, too, basically
analogous to pre- and post-'67 E Types. The early ones
had a plexiglass cover and look sleeker. The later ones
have the headlights raised slightly to meet British
headlight laws.
> Speaking of 1/4 eliptic rear springs- when I bought the car, the guy
>mentioned that the rear end had a clunk around corners ever since he had
>reassembled it. No wonder, what with loose bolts holding the shocks to the
>body! Talk about sloppy cornering! What standard add-ons are there for the
>1/4 Eliptic rear?
Well:
Trailing arms. The trickest I've seen are milled from a
space-age plastic that has ~no friction and doesn't bend.
They also don't weigh anything. Next trickest have
spherical rod-ends mounted to a piece of hex rod with a
turnbuckle; this way you can adjust the length of the
trailing arm to dial in the suspension slightly.
There are also some very slick one-piece leaf springs to
replace the 15-piece stock bits. The general consensus
seems to be to use moderately soft springs, stiff shocks
and add a sway bar to limit roll. This lets you keep
the power to the ground and modulates the tailhappiness
while not losing it.
The tube-shock conversion for the rear is really simple:
a couple of bolts and a pair of shockers. The Spax kit
seems the coolest, if only because of the adjustability.
Actually, though, the factory Targa Florio Sprites used
a four-shock rear end: they kept the stock levers in place
and used them much the way Ford does on the Mustang GT,
to absorb front-rear loading and axle hop, then they installed
some Konis set at maximum soft to handle up-and-down loads.
This worked supremely well on rough roads and smooth alike.
I don't know where they hooked the Konis, though, and even I
don't have a picture of that...
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