Suspension
Front Suspension
Although most of the components have been upgraded, any self respecting Lotus Elan owner would recognise the front suspension as still being basically the same as the original setup.
However, there have been many 'tweaks' to the setup.
The dampers have been replaced with fullt adjustable bespoke units specifically built for this car. One consequence of this is that the front anti-roll bar used to be attached to the bottom of the damper. The new dampers don't have this facility so this forced a design change to the bar. After lengthy discussions with my suspension guru, Bob Buck, we decided to do away with the ARB and use droop limiters instead. Whether this idea works we will have to wait and see.
Adjustable droop limiters for front and rear.
Relying on the geometric accuracy of the suspension mounting points leaves no adjustment options. So I designed (with Graham Hathaway's help) and had fabricated a set of adjustable top wishbones. You can buy these off the shelf, but you have to remove them to adjust them, not good. My design allows for camber adjustment in-situ.
Off the shelf 'adjustable' wishbones Ihad originallyplanned to use. The came with rubber bushes but I planned to replace these with rod ends.
My design for adjustable wishbones
By loosening the locking sleeves the camber can be adjusted without having to remove the wishbones.
Caster isn't adjustable as standard, either. So, by simply increasing the thread length on the top mounting studs caster is now adjustable by simply moving the nuts either side of the rod ends, again in-situ.
On the actual car, the mounting studs are threaded all the way to the chassis and not as shown above. Caster is adjusted by simply moving the nuts that sit either side of the rod ends.
Left is standard, right is modified
The next weakness to address were the bottom trunnions. The front suspension is basically Triumph Herald/Spitfire and these were more than adequate. However, on the Elan they are a bit of a liability and need regular maintenance in order to prevent premature wear.
Canley Classics offer a trunnionless vertical link unit. They are designed for standard bottom wishbones, so a little modifying was required to make them work with my Spyder bones.
Look closely just to the left of the bottom wishbone bolt and you will see a traingular piece of metal. This is part of the spacer used to prevent the ball joint from rotating on the wishbones. Standard wishbones are longer so don't have this problem. Notice that these haven't escaped the dreaded lightening drill.
The top balljoint is the only part that has escaped attention as it is more than up to the job.
The standard pressed steel U section bottom wishbones have been changed for Spyder tubular units. Same dimensions but stronger.
As mentioned earlier, the dampers have been upgraded. This is the second time that I have changed them. When I started drag racing in the late 70s I changed the front dampers to a pair of Armstrong adjustable units. These I set to 90/10. That is a lot of droop (to allow front of car to rise during acceleration) and little rebound (to help keep the rearward weight transference). Can't say that I noticed any improvement in times and it felt no different on the road.
So, this time I had a bespoke set made to match the car's spec. The two short dampers in the photo opposite are the front dampers. The tender springs have since been removed from these in order to reduce ride height.
Rear Suspension
