So many of you replied publicly and privately that I believe I should
report how the sway-bar thing went.
Several of my Minnesota Triumphs buddies came over on Saturday. One, John
Kallaus, wanted to put an ADDCO bar on his TR4.
To make the ADDCO sway-bar bracket conform to the Triumph bumper bracket,
the ends were bent.
To make it fit inside the Triumph bumper bracket, each of the ADDCO backing
plates was trimmed on one side with the saw that made Milwaukee famous.
Then the plate was bent with vise and large hammer until it fit inside the
Triumph bumper bracket. The change in radius meant that the slots in the
ADDCO backing plate were now too far apart, so a rat-tail file was used to
elongate the slots. The provided 3/8 bolts and Nyloc nuts worked perfectly.
The bolts provided by ADDCO to fasten the adaptor tabs to the upper control
arms were too long. The length apparently needed was 2.25 or 2.5 inches.
The local hardware supply had only 2.5" bolts in Grade 5 and they worked
fine, if a little too long. No, I am not cutting them off...
John borrowed my Sawzall to cut the plates for his car. Since he too had
been given the 3" control-arm bolts, I let him have the two extra 2.5-inch
bolts I had bought.
Ran an autocross today, and the result is OK. Rear-wheel-lifting is greatly
reduced. It is still possible to provoke oversteer with trailing throttle.
With the limited autocross exposure planned for the car, and its new manners
on the public roads, this is the setup I plan on keeping. Thanks for all
your help, especially Brian Sanborn, who raved about the handling of his car
he was right) and supplied me with two excellent digital pix to show that
I was not crazy to mount the bar this way. The trick to understanding the
cryptic ADDCO instructions is to realize that they call these bumper
brackets
"struts".
Phil Ethier West Side Saint Paul Minnesota USA
1970 Lotus Europa, 1992 Saturn SL2, 1986 Suburban, 1962 TR4 CT2846L
pethier@isd.net http://www.mnautox.com/ http://www.vtr2002.org
/// triumphs@autox.team.net mailing list
/// To unsubscribe send a plain text message to majordomo@autox.team.net
/// with nothing in it but
///
/// unsubscribe triumphs
///
/// or try http://www.team.net/cgi-bin/majorcool
|