Uprated front anti roll bar now fitted -
You can see how much thicker the late Spitfire arb is compared to the Vitesse one. It's an essential upgrade if you go down the swing-spring route and recommended by a lot of Triumph specialists (including Phil J) even if you keep the swing-axle setup.
No sign of the new front springs yet so I put the wheels back on and took the car down off the axle stands to check what's happened to the ride height at the back.
This is the 'before' shot -
And here's the 'after' (sorry they're not from the same angle but it's raining heavily) -
The result of removing three more spring leaves and taking about 40mm out of the lowering block was a rise of no more than about 10 - 15mm. That's fine so long as the shocks don't bottom out over bumps, so I went for a test drive in the pi$$ing rain to see what effect the changes have had.
The back end now feels more compliant. The difference is quite subtle - you wouldn't call it soft - but you can feel the back suspension absorbing the bumps now rather than crashing over them. Even from a short test drive I can feel that this has effectively improved the handling. I was able to push it round a roundabout much faster than I could before as it doesn't feel like it's going to step out of line if the back hits a bump, which it did before.
I want to take a full sized adult in the passenger seat for a run over a bumpier road to make sure nothing bottoms out before I can fully recommend this mod, but the early signs are positive.
As I rather like the stance my car has I'll be looking to get a bit more ground clearance by raising the front about an inch or so (the chassis is visibly angled down towards the front at the moment) and by modifying the exhaust (which is what fouls) to a side exit one that won't have to go under the diff housing. More details to follow next week as I'm back to work tomorrow
