A few significant events leading up to getting the car properly roadworthy:
- 15th November 2000
- 20th December 2000
- 14th March 2001
- 20th March 2001
- 31st March 2001
- 11th April 2001
- 14th April 2001
- 21st April 2001
- 5th May 2001
- 13th Aug 2001
15th November 2000
I fitted the lower and harder front springs. It doesn’t appear to lower the car by much, but the springs were a full inch shorter than the ones that came out, so it must have lowered it some. Its just not a drastic change, and I didn’t measure the clearance between the top of the tyre and the wheel arch before I removed the old ones.
It definitely makes a difference to the drive, though. The front end is tighter and less squirrelly.
While I was in about the front suspension, I found lots of play in the lower trunnion area. It was to be expected, as it’s a common wear area, but that’s another job I need to get to before I use the car much…
20th December 2000
So I finally received the Panhard rod kit from the Winner’s Circle. After numerous phone calls with the claim that “we’re just waiting for [some part] to get back from the shop – we’ll be sending it out to you next week”, then a “we must have lost your order”, followed by a “oh, here it is”, it turned up on my doorstep. There’s really not much to it – the main components, other than some nuts and bolts, are the bar itself, a large bracket that bolts to the floor of the car using some of the bolt holes at the front left corner of the fuel tank, and a smaller bracket that bolts up under the lower shock absorber mounting plate at the right spring. You can see these components in the picture on the right.
The only problem is (see the picture on the left) that there’s no room on the left of the tank to accommodate the short edge of the large bracket, as the exhaust silencer inconveniently occupies the exact same spot! The picture was taken from the rear of the car looking forwards. The black thing on the right is the corner of the fuel tank. The nut you can see between the tank and the silencer is one of those that the bracket needs to bolt to.
Next thing to do is take a trip to an exhaust place to see if they can put a little jog in the long section of the pipe that runs under the car. If I can get the silencer an inch or so to the left, there should be enough clearance.
14th March 2001
I drove the car to work for the first time earlier this week. To add a little more ‘luxury’ to the interior, I dug out the old door panel and gave it the once over (right). It cleaned up surprisingly well, and doesn’t look too bad. The covered rail at the top of the door was tatty, so I ripped off the the black vinyl, took some sandpaper and wire wool to it, and finished it off with a clear coat of lacquer. The plan was just to make it look better for now, without going to the hassle of re-covering it, but I may end up doing the other door the same way, as well as the rail that goes around the rear of the cockpit area. I quite like the way it looks.
The drive was fun, if not a little unnerving. I’m sure a few people didn’t even know I was there until the last minute. This is definitely a small car by American standards!
Also, I’ve yet to have the exhaust modified, so the Panhard rod is still sitting on the floor of the garage.
20th March 2001
Just an hour’s labour, and the exhaust has been nicely modified to move it as far left as it can go without interfering with the left hand shock absorber lower linkage. Unfortunately, now that I actually have room to trial fit the Panhard rod bracket, I’ve discovered that it wasn’t designed to go quite where I thought it would. Doh!
The long end of the bracket runs along the front flange of the tank, but the short end (which I thought followed the left flange) needs to go about 4 inches to the left of the tank. There’s just no way! The exhaust would have to go under the bracket, which puts it way too close to the ground. I considered mounting the bracket where I originally thought it should go, and having the bar shortened to accommodate the change, but I gave up on that idea and just sent the thing back. So much for that. I’d love to see how others got this thing to fit.
31st March 2001
The Panhard rod fiasco reminded me that I had a brand new pair of rear springs and nylon shackle bushes sitting on the garage floor. Maybe the newer springs and the hard bushes would solve the axle location problem, at least enough to stop the tyres rubbing most of the time. Off came one spring. Standing it on the floor next to one of the new ones, it was easy to see that the car would sit way too high. The new springs are harder sprung, and stand a good 2 inches higher than the old ones. I discovered a local spring shop that can “re-arch” springs for $40 a spring, so that’s my next errand.
11th April 2001
Got the springs back from the spring shop, and they’re now exactly the same height as the old ones when standing on the floor. As they are harder, I assumed that the ride height would be slightly greater. Now that they are fitted, it looks about the same, but I admit that I hadn’t measured it before, so I can’t be sure. Anyway, it looks fine, so I’m not worried about it. One interesting thing, though: with the old springs, it was the right tyre that was in danger of rubbing against the wheelarch, as the axle seemed to be off-centre to the right. With the new springs, there’s lots of clearance for the right tyre, and the left tyre is close to the wheelarch! I can only assume that it’s something to do with the springs not being quite straight, as there’s no way to make left right adjustments of any kind at the spring hanger, the shackle nor the axle locating pin.
I still haven’t driven the car, so maybe it will settle a little. If not, I’ll try loosening all the fasteners and see if I can force the whole thing back over towards centre.
14th April 2001
Looking back over my ramblings, I noticed that I hadn’t mentioned something that had been bothering me for a long time. On hard acceleration, and sometimes while cruising, there was the most horrible grinding, rattling sound coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the bellhousing. I was sure it was an internal problem, but a fellow Sprite (and Mini) owner pointed out that it reminded him of the noise one of his cars had made when the exhaust was fouling the chassis. I finally got around to crawling under the car to check it out, and discovered that there is a hump on the lower front edge of the gearbox that was extremely close to the lower gearbox mounting plate that bolts to the chassis. Moving the whole drivetrain forwards a little would have resulted in more clearance here, but unbolting the engine and gearbox mounts and levering the whole thing didn’t budge it, so I made up a couple of spacers to add to the height of the gearbox rubber mountings. That lifted the gearbox up enough to provide visible clearance. A quick test drive proved that the noise was gone! Unfortunately, there was now a tick-tick-tick coming from the gearbox area that turned out to be the front U-Joint contacting the top of the gearbox tunnel. I had raised it up enough to get rid of one noise, but created another! This one was not as bad sounding as the old one, though, and it didn’t take much to cut out a small section of metal from the tunnel to provide some clearance. An aluminium plate rivetted over the hole closed it up and still gave the necessary clearance, so all is well.
On the subject of things I hadn’t mentioned, there’s also the problem of the battery leaking all over my nice new engine bay paint job. It’s not too bad, just a couple of slight drips that I noticed quickly enough to remove before any damage was done (other than a slight discolouration of the paint). Alternator voltage appears to be fine, so I don’t think I’m overcharging the battery. There’s also the problem of the radiator dumping coolant out of the overflow pipe whenever I drive the car hard and then turn it off. I’ll need to see if I can find an overflow bottle of some kind.
21st April 2001
Had the alternator checked this week, and it’s fine. I exchanged the battery for a new one, made sure that all the existing earthing points are clean and secure, and added an additional earth strap from the chassis to the engine block (the alternator guy said that it’s possible for a battery to overcharge if the alternator earth is bad – I’m not sure I understand why, but I took his word for it). So far, no more leaking battery, and I’ve put a few more miles on the car.
I also fitted an overflow bottle ($6.99 from Pep-Boys!) to see if that stops me from losing more coolant.
5th May 2001
I found a place online last week that can make up spray cans in any colour, based on the year and make of your car, or the paint code if you have it. I have a book that lists all the available colours for the year my car was built, and only one Blue was offered (Riviera Blue – BU44), so I ordered a couple of cans of that. There’s no way I’m going to get around to having the car painted this year, as the existing paint needs to be removed and there’s some panel work to be done, so I thought that I’d at least get it all the same colour to make it look a little better. Anyway, the cans arrived today, and the car is now all blue. The original paint is dull, and the new paint is glossy, but at least it’s all one colour, and it looks a lot nicer. I got the custom spray cans from Tower Paint.
12th May 2001
Here are some shots of my $15 paint job.
And here is one of me at the British Car Day at Chateau Elan in Georgia.
13th Aug 2001
I came across a generic Panhard Rod kit for up for auction on eBay, so I thought I’d bid on it, as I still had the problem of the left tyre rubbing on the inner wheel arch when cornering, especially with a passenger. The kit (on the left) is from Competition Engineering (part number C2037), and is designed to be customised to fit almost any application. As you can see from the components, it’s intended to be welded to the axle and the car’s chassis. The bar itself is 30″ long, and is designed to be cut to length. The kit retails for about $75 from Competition Engineering, and I got it for about half of that. On the right is the result, after much measuring, a little work with a hacksaw and grinder, a few pieces of angle iron, and a trip to the local welding shop.
If you compare it with the Winner’s Circle kit that I ended up sending back, you’ll see where most of the inspiration came from! Also, I wanted the whole thing to bolt to the car, rather than have to be welded, so that it will be easy to move to another car if needs be.
The bracket that holds the axle end of the bar is just a 3″ long bolt, with the head cut off and the shank welded to a short piece of 2″ angle iron, that I drilled to mount to the ends of the inner U-bolt (under the shock absorber lower mounting plate). After I took this picture, I added a couple of bolt-on lengths of angle iron to strengthen the chassis mounting bracket in the two planes parallel to and perpendicular to the the axle. I bolted these on, rather than have them welded, so that access to the bolts holding the whole assembly to the bottom of the boot floor would remain reasonably accessible. You can just about see one of them in the pictures below.
A few extra holes drilled around the left and front flanges of the fuel tank, and the removal and replacement (with new) of the U bolt nuts, and installation is complete! Here are some pictures of it installed on the car. All in all, it cost me only about $70.
While I had the car up on stands, on the advice of Bill Perry of Rivergate Restorations, I added an additional oil seal to the rear of my 5-speed gearbox. I discovered that it was leaking a while back, and I suspect that the reason is that the seal that is designed to be used with this gearbox is a nice double-lipped one, whereas the one that has to be used in the Sprite/Midget has only a single lip. The original seal is integral to a “dust cover”, which is a large flange affair, that there is no room for in the gearbox tunnel – hence the need to use the other one. Fortunately, though, the single lipped seal is almost half as narrow as the original, so there is room for two of these! It wasn’t easy getting the second one in, as I had to apply the force to tap it into place from the rear of the gearbox tunnel, due to the lack of accessibility up front. I removed the propshaft, placed the seal in position through the gear lever hole, and attached a large socket to the end of a long piece of tube, which I used as a drift to tap the seal into place from the rear of the tunnel! It wasn’t much fun, but it’s in.
A quick test drive, and there is no sign of oil leaking any more so, hopefully, that’s fixed. As for the Panhard rod, it didn’t break! I didn’t get that much of a chance to evaluate the difference in handling, but I did throw it around corners more aggressively than I had done before, now that I’m not so worried about destroying the tyres. It seems to handle well, but it’s hard to say how much better. A bit more power and I’d have a better idea!
More Here (January 2007)
