A further note on this topic, vis a vis the several posts that cite what a
difference it makes when you replace the Armstrongs with tube shocks.
Reminds me of a couple of other car groups. One deals with a make of car that
uses electric cooling fans. Many people there replace their old failing units
with new snazzy Bosch fans and draw the conclusion that the factory fitments
(which were probably barely turning over before being replaced) were
inherently inferior.
Similarly, another group I frequent often deals with a front brake upgrade to
different callipers from another model. They take their stock callipers with
100,000 miles (translated from the metric for the ex-colonial readership),
and replace them with new units (which, BTW necessitates a master cylinder
change), and then swear that the factory didn't know what they were doing
putting inadequate brakes on the cars in the first place.
When I, or someone else with more than a pair of ganglia to their name, point
out that if they had just replaced the worn out units with new ones, they
would have had the same improvement, many of them are, how shall I put
this... too damned dense... to see the point.
Same thing with Armstrong shocks. They are actually exceptionally good for an
OE shock - NO other make that I can think of that was fitted to new cars in
that period would go 1/4 as long as a properly maintained Armstrong would.
Some of the 60s Japanese cars had 10,000 mile shocks fitted!
I am not saying that there are no gains in fitting a tube shock in place of a
lever shock - just that most people would neither notice, nor care about the
difference.
It will be the rare driver indeed that really benefits from a switch to tube
shocks, but many more owners will do the conversion, not because they need
to, but for the same reason they do many other add-ons like Mallory
distributors, negative camber A arms, mag wheels etc. They just want to do
it, for reasons often tied up with image, or the simple desire to work on
their toy and believe that they are accomplishing something.
Many mods are neutral - they don't harm the car's performance, but some are
detrimental. I had one friend that insisted on fitting Ferodo DS11 pads to
his MGB. Many of you may not know what they are. They were a very good racing
compound (I used them for years before switching to a carbon/kevlar pad, when
the asbestos containing DS11 became unavailable for my Twincam), but they
were a racing pad that needed to be warm before they worked. I regularly
swung the ass of my car off the end of the first hairpin turn at the start of
a race; the next lap, all was well and the pads had reached operating
temperature.
I told my intransigent friend that if I were the lawyer opposing him in an
accident case, and could show that he had intentionally _reduced_ the cold
performance of his brakes, and that had any relevance to the accident, he
would be toast. I never did hear from him as to whether the brakes had caused
him grief, but another guy I knew rolled his 240 Z (that's zed, not 'zee',
you American linguistic savages!) on the first turn coming down from a ski
hill for exactly that reason.
Anyway, as I started out saying, I rather like Armstrongs....
Bill S.
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