Suspect suspension

I have always struggled with the car understeering when trying to get out of the corners coupled with high roll angles by trying to run the car soft to keep the rear axle under control . I have tried various settings and springs but felt that this was the biggest downfall of the car in its present state. Family friend John Bentley offered to look into the geometry of the car and see if he could come up with some improvements. After a few hours of measuring and putting it all into his suspension program he could easily see why the car was rolling so much and suffering from understeer. The roll centre was far too low and moved around a great deal during roll. Also the geometry meant that at 2.5 degs of chassis roll, the outside wheel was over 1 degree in positive camber. We didnt want to start from scratch with the suspension, and wanted to keep the escort uprights and existing dampers (to save cost). We also didn't want to be hacking off the complete front end and remaking everything, so john started to look at what fairly simple changes would gain us benefits. He calculated that by dropping the upper wishbones to the lowest and most outboard pivot holes on the existing pickups would be beneficial in on all counts, in fact actually keeping the wheel in negative camber during roll. It also meant no changes to the lower wishbones, or damper pick up points. The only new items required would be upper wishbones, and these again only needed minimal changes, leaving the outboard parts the same as standard, and just modifying the angles and lengths of the inboard parts. This would also give the opportunity to gain a rising rate spring rate during compression.

We ordered some wishbones from Fury, but asked just for just the outer parts, we could then add our own inner geometry. After setting the ride height f the car using some blocks under the chassis, we used some MDF and blocks to set the uprights at the same height as if the wheels were fitted. We could then check the movement of the wishbones and the associated positions and movement of the dampers during bum and droop.

With the pivot point decided upon and marking it on an MDF jig fitted to the wishbone we built up the inboard parts and tacked them in position.

We then added a brace and made the the otherside. The picture shows the difference between the old and new wishbones. The tacked up wishbones where then sent off to the Tig welding man and powder coaters.

The rear axle links after the powder coatings and new bushes