John,
Good point about the weld. I do fairly regularly inspect the bits of the car I'm concerned about but that's not been on my list. I'd been working on the basis there isn't a great deal of load in it (and I hope there isn't given the stock arrangement it came with!) but I guess under combinations of hard acceleration/cornering it will load up as the contact patch moves outwards. I've wondered on and off about welding a new turret structure onto the upright (wouldn't need an insert or anything fancy with the rose joint) - I could move the joint forward a few mm while I was at it to increase wheel clearance at the expense of a little toe stiffness. I think I'm happy enough with my welding now to do that
. I'll keep an eye on it anyway.
Nick,
I personally didn't find the 300lb springs on the front to be a good mod - not on the road anyway. It's too stiff for the weight on the front. I wrote something about it a few years ago
here (I notice the link to spring/frequency info I posted then is now broken - try
this instead). You'll see that 300lb on the front of this car gives very high frequency, not well matched to the rear. I've still got my calculator spreadsheet if you want to play around with the numbers.
Since then I've got the ARB installed and the combination of lighter springs and ARB is a winner I think. Also got split front/rear brakes and sorted the bias problem so the back no longer feels as if it's trying to overtake the front under braking. Much better all round. I'd almost say I'm happy with it these days!