Hi Mark,
I haven't tried that kit, and I probably won't any time soon. IMHO, there
is usually no reason to go to this expense and effort. Here's my 2 cents
worth.
Under most conditions TR4 Armstrong lever shocks are fine and easily
rebuilt. They can even be tweaked and tuned to meet a variety of needs. IMHO,
this
is true for all the live axle TRs, assuming normal everyday to moderately
aggressive driving, and thar standard to uprated multi-leaf springs are being
used. The reason is that multi-leaf springs have quite a bit of dampening of
their own, due to the leaves rubbing against each other whenever the spring
flexes.
*If* heavy duty multi-leaf springs are being used and the car were being
driven competitively, larger lever shocks *might* be wanted (DAS10 instead of
the orginal DAS9), but that means replacing the mounting brackets on the frame
with a larger ones. About the biggest concern with the original lever shocks
is overheating during heavy use. That's when the bigger lever shocks are
called for. In this situation, it might be cheaper and just about as easy to
go
ahead and install "modern" shocks like the kit you are asking about. But, the
replacement tube shocks had better be good quality, too, in order to handle the
heavy demand on them.
To a point, it's possible to uprate standard lever shocks with different
valves (as Randall suggests) and/or heavier oil. An old competition prep trick
was to replace the TR's shock valves with ones from the lever shocks used on
the front suspension of an MGB, for approx. 25% increase in dampening. Now
there are even adjustable dampening valves for standard Armstrong lever shocks,
available from one or two of the British vendors. Shock action can also be
improved with better linkage, eliminating the rubber bushings. Something like
rod
ends (aka, rose joints in England) might be used instead. These can be pretty
easily fabricated, or there are kits available from some of the British
vendors. More solid linkage will probably lead to more road noise, as a
possible
side effect.
The only time that a conversion to tube shocks is pretty much necessary
on the live axle TRs is *if* the rear springs are changed to mono-leaf type. As
the name implies, these are not made up of layers of leaves, but instead are
one single, thick leaf. This type of spring is sometimes used in competition
because it performs more predictably than multi-leaf (which are effected by
lubrication , or lack of it, rust, etc., between the leaves). Mono-leaf springs
have no internal leaves rubbing together and, thus, no inherent dampening
effect of their own. That places more demand on the shocks alone to keep the
suspension under control. In this case, changing to modern tube shocks might be
a
really good idea.
All this applies *only* to the live axle/multi-leaf spring TRs. The IRS
cars can really benefit from a tube shock conversion, under most driving
conditions.
Hope this helps.
Alan Myers
San Jose, Calif.
'62 TR4 CT17602L
Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2005 16:58:09 -0700
From: Mark Vaden <markvaden@gmail.com>
Subject: TR4 live axle tube shock conversion
I was searching ebay, and I ran across the following item #457976195
Has anyone tried this? Anyone have any comments?
- -Mark
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