Thanks for the feedback guys. Yes, it drives very much like a new car. It picks up and sheds speed quickly, stays straight under braking and has nice, positive steering (reconditioned Spitfire rack, £35 exchange from Canley's).
The suspension is too stiff for the road at the moment though. Although it does handle like a go-kart there are a couple of sunken 'A' roads across the fens round here where I have to back off to about 50mph or risk going into a low orbit because the suspension isn't able to absorb the dips and crests.
I plan to soften and raise it over the winter to give me a bit more confidence at speed and stop the exhaust fouling the speed bumps outside Argos (those stupid black rubber wedges that even some conventional cars grind over).
I have a pair of 150lb Spitfire front springs on back order (must ring Canley's Monday), which I'll probably cut down by about 50mm (currently on 200lb Vitesse springs cut down by 95mm), and fit the heavy duty front arb to compensate for the reduction in roll stiffness at the front.
For the rear suspension I've considered going down the swing-spring route as one or two people have commented that it improves the ride, but what I might try first is to take out the 75mm lowering block and remove one, or perhaps two more of the leaf springs from the stack.
That'll need a couple of the clamps cutting from the stack of springs, but I'll make some new ones to hold the remaining leaves together. From the picture below you can see that the inner clamps hold three upper leaves together and I might just take out the top two first and see what happens...
The final suspension mod will be to replace the 175/70/14 tyres with 175/80/14's. These
should fit without fouling once the front suspension is raised a couple of inches, and should soften the ride slightly due to the taller side-walls while also filling the arches better. They'll also raise the gearing a tad, giving me a potential top speed of...
137mph.
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