Front spring rubber replacement

[Michael Beattie]

In a previous discussion, I thought I read that the works rally cars had the rubber spacer between the front sprint and the top wishbone replaced with a metal spacer and roller bearing. Is this correct?

What I wish to achieve is to be able to easily adjust the front ride height of the Fulvia for competing on different surfaces. I.E. being able to raise the front for gravel rallies.

I have thought about putting a metal spacer with a roller bearing at the top where it would allow for the movement of the spring.

Any thoughts are welcome


Cheers

Michael

[william vd Sman]

Hi michael,
the story of the roller installation on the works cars is only partly correct. Almost all works cars used for (off road) rallying had rubber blocks albeit beefed up. For road rallies or circuit races rollers were sometimes used. They are however not so complyent as the rubbers and cause much more vibration and even promote spring breakage due to the localised exerted pressure on the leaf. Immagine a jump!
Another cause for problems was the fact that the roller, sometimes a ball or roller bearing but also sometimes simply using a lower wishbone bolt in a steel U-frame is prone to dirt and due to the excessive weight of the car on a small section of the roller causes rappid seizing of the whole thing. What you end up with is a non rolling metal piece constantly filing away at the leafspring. You can immagine what happens next!
During the competition years this was hardly a problem as the cars were dismanteled after every event and suspect parts would be replaced. But 40 years on this is not the advised way to go. For ride height adjustments the works used different rate springs. You can immagine that the cars prepared for the Safari rally and Corsica were not only different in the height of the roller of rubber block!
On my car I have the roller fitted and even though it is an original Lancia Squadra Corse casting the roller arrangement has cost me a lot of headache. In the end I just installed an arrangement of six 8mm wide sealed rollerbearings to create a sealed roller. This works OK but every 5000KMs I have to replace half of them due to the fact that they crack! And I only drive the car on the road! The other experience I have is that the leafspring just cannot cope with small irregularitys like coil springs can. Deleting the rubbers for a 'tight' arrangement makes the road feel much rougher than it is. Some spontaniously undone spotwelds prove me right. In other words, it looks the part but in fact isn't.

[tim]

Hi

See an article by Doug Ellis in LMC's vivaLancia Jan 2006!

Tim

[Michael Beattie]

Thanks William, a very comprehensive reply, and certainly food for thought. As I will be doing some special tests on gravel, it looks like a better solution is to come up with some way of using the standard rubbers with spacers.

Tim, I wasn't in the LMC until April 06 so I don't have the Jan 06 VL, any chance of a you doing a scan of the article?

Cheers

Michael

[Peter de Wit]

Michael,

I had a similar problem as yours: how to adjust the ride hight. I solved this in the following way: Use OLD standard rubbers that go between the spring and top wish bone. If you have fresh springs (I guess you have) these standard items would be too high for sure. Chop off the underside (with the two bolts and all), in the height you want to have it. Mount it by only using the two top bolts. The bottom will just rest on the flat part of the wish bone without being mounted at all. This worked fine with me. I could adjust the height by fitting a larger block (easy) or mounting a piece of alloy of 1 cm on top of the top wishbone. That was the official way. I normally just added a slice of the same round rubber of the blocks and just put it between the rubber block and the top wishbone. Without securing it. Not recommended, but it worked. But the first part is really great: getting away with the metal plate and bolts of the bottom part of the rubber. I added this to youtube today ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTj6zqVJbM4 ). This is 300km of special stages with 800km connections. Used the above system there. Again: no problems at all. Plus I could change the ride height within a minute.

Reason I meant OLD, is because these are really hard. Reproductions tend to be too soft if you ask me.

Cheers, Peter

[Michael Beattie]

Thanks Peter.

I like the Idea of chopping off the metal plate, very clever !! That is an easier option as all I need to do is get different thickness of alloy plates made, not too much expensive metal work needed

[Peter de Wit]

Plus you have the advantage of easy fitment. I had a wooden block with me while at stages to do the adjustment in the field. Procedure: leave the car on the ground, put the block between spring and subframe (between the two legs up the large alloy pieces. Jack up the car. The spring will rest on the block, the wheel will go down. And you put something in between the rubber and the wishbone without even taken your wheel off. Only requirement is that you make the correct length of block. My car is sold now, but the owner still has that block....

Cheers, Peter

[Paul de R. Leclercq]

It was Doug Ellis, following my suggestion who made my roller mounts. They transformed the car, with much better turn-in noticeable. Mine have done I suppose about 40,000 miles. There are just two ball races per side and I was worried that they would fail, so I bought some spare ones.

These are still in the wrappers as the originals are still perfect.

Happy New Year to all

Paul