I have to give some background prior to my question.
Last Wednesday, I was running around in my stock 65 Sprite. Cornering a
bit more spirited than most, the car feels nice and in control, no
worries.
Next day, I am going through town, thinking to myself how good this car
has been running. The thought crosses my mind, I wonder what will go
wrong next, so that I hopefully can beat it to the punch. No such luck,
within a mile of that thought, my left rear tire blows out. I am 1/4 of
a mile from a gas station, so I limp it there to have a safe place to
change the tires. The tire was shredded, and the car was bucking like
hell the whole way there.
I change the tire, and hit the road again. Now, the rear end is getting
squirrely on my, it has a bit of a "twitch" back and forth. Nothing
regular, nothing consistent, just every now and then, it will shift,
sometimes left, sometimes right, but no pattern to the madness. I pull
over, and make sure all the lugs are tight, they are, so I go on. I get
back near the house, and now notice, when I take off, the drive shaft
sounds like it is scrubbing the tunnel. I get to the house, look at the
tires, and the right side tire is almost touching the rear of the wheel
well. The damn spring has broken.
SO on Saturday, I get another set of leaf springs (half elliptic) and
put them on the car. They were off of a '73 Midget that I parted out 5
years ago, and now the car sits a little high in the rear. Looks like
when we used to put air shocks on the back of our cars in the 70's. With
the roll bar and all, it looks kinda cool, but I STILL have the twitch
in the rear of the car. I have looked at everything I can think of that
could be loose. The springs are tight, the axle is tight to the spring,
the axles are not loose in the case.
Now my question, is it still twitching, because the car is boosted about
2 1/2" to high in the back, and they don't weigh much to start with?
Should I put about 100 pounds of sand in the trunk to help these springs
settle in? Or am I missing something completely?
Brad
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