The supplementary cooling system will have to wait for another day now as it's not an urgent upgrade, just one that I want to make before I undertake any more motorway journeys, which won't be for a while now.
Another non-essential change took priority today as I had a pair of 175/80/14 tyres fitted this morning to replace two of the 175/70/14's I've been running.
You can clearly see the difference in diameter, the new size is on the left -
The reason for only ordering two is that I wasn't
sure they'd fit on the front without further modification to the bulkhead, but I
was confident that they'd fit on the back, so I could always run with the lower profile tyres on the front if I couldn't make the bigger ones fit.
To my surprise, they fitted on the front with no more fouling of the bulkhead than the 175/70/14's exhibited before I raised the front suspension. They just skim the bulkhead on full lock, but it doesn't restrict the steering or cause any judder. I took it for a test run for a couple of miles and threw it round a couple of roundabouts with no problems.
Here they are fitted to the front -
I then swapped them to the back as it looked a bit odd running with smaller tyres on the back than the front, and went for another test drive. Guess what, they fouled the rear arches during the roundabout test
You can see how little clearance they had here -
So, it was out with the rear spring,
again, so I could remove the final 18mm of lowering 'shims' and put two of the recently removed intermediate springs back in for a slightly firmer back end (ooh, Matron!).
Before -
After -
And as Goldilocks would confirm the result is just right -
They don't foul any more and I've actually got some ground clearance. The taller side walls are more compliant and compensate for stiffening the rear spring while I'm pleased with the way they look, so I'll be ordering another pair for the front.