[Alpines] Sunbeam Alpine Series II Rear Springs

[Ron Tebo]

Allan:

I believe they were actually the same spring with an extra leaf added, 
but Tiger owners may know better! Here is something out of my archive 
that supports my belief.

Ron Tebo

Subject:
Re: [Alpines] [Tigers] Speaking of Panhard Bars...
From:
Marc James Small <marcsmall at comcast.net>
Date:
Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:54:56 -0400
To:
drmayf at mayfco.com, "tigers at autox.team.net" <tigers at autox.team.net>, 
Alpines <alpines at autox.team.net>

At 04:09 PM 7/5/2008, drmayf wrote:
 >Are there any other cars that use leaf springs like our cars and a
 >panhard bar? The use of a panhard bar in our case is just counter
 >intuitive to me. The leaf springs keep the rear end located and that
 >would seem to make the panhard bar redundant. Yeah, I know about wheel
 >hop, but a panhard bar or any other kind of lateral location linkage is
 >to keep the rear centered.  If I put coil overs on the rear of my car,
 >then, yeah, a locating bar would be needed, as well as some trailing
 >linkage for fore and aft movement.
 >
 >So why did they install it? Did the Alpine have one? .


The much more civilized Alpine did not need a
Panhard Rod to produce manueverability which, all
else being equal, routinely leaves Tigers in the
dust on any sort of decent back road.

The original Tigers were produced by mushing up
Alpine bodies and the only suspension
modifications were those necessary to fit that
ungainly Ford mill into a decently sized engine
compartment.  Hence, the rear suspension remained
the same -- a torn rotator cuff (damn!  there
goes my career pitching for the Atlanta Braves,
and I really WAS looking forward to a perfect
World Series game against the detestable Yankees
or the even more detestable Boston Dead Sox)
makes it hard for me to dig out my parts
manuals.  I suspect without checking these that
the Alpine IIIa/IV rear springs were identical to
those on the Alpine 260 if not for those on the Alpine V and Tiger II.

If you upgrade your rear springs to something
more in line with that unGodly amount of power
that barbaric engine provides, a Panhard Rod becomes unnecessary.

(The above is all written in good fun save for
the cmments about the Yankees and the Boston
Morons, and, yes, I grin as I write these
words.  You guys all live on the Left Coast and
therefore have no knowledge of REAL baseball.)

Marc



Allan Ballard wrote:

>Are Tiger leaf springs and Alpine SII leafs the same length .. ??