On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Evangelos G. Makris wrote:
> My 1966 Sprite has been converted to use rear gas shocks.
> It seems this was a handmade job. The shocks are quite
> long, almost vertical and, at their upper end, are bolted
> to thick plates that appear to be made of wood.
Wood? Evangelos, they must not have safety inspections in Greece...:-)
> On the road the rear end handles so much better than the
> front, which still uses these impossible Armstrong lever
> affairs. I wish the front end would understeer less so
> I can match the Mini's cornering speeds (yea, right,
> even the latest BMW 5-series cannot keep up with a stock
> suspended Mini on hairpins and mountain turns, or the
> BMW drivers are chickens, ha!)
Last summer in Germany, I drove a friend's Mini 1100 with Cooper S rims
and 165/10 tires.
Going up a mountain with tight switchback turns, I thought the FWD
Mini would be a major drag. Carrying as much speed as possible into the
corners, I expected major understeer and made sure the other lane was
free. To my surprise, the little thing just flips around the tight
corners with no loss of adhesion. My buddy in a Fiat X 1/9 with tweaked
suspension could barely keep up. This particular engine with different
intake, K&N, LCB and RC40 exhaust also pulled extremely impressively.
To do this in a Sprite, you would need a big swaybar in the rear to get it
to rotate and a limited slip diff to get the power down to get up the
hill, I guess.
Ulix __/__,__
.......................................................... (_o____o_)....
'67 Sprite
|