A new beginning

Burlington Diary February 2007

Weds.28.02.07. This is the final day of February and after an encouraging reflective meeting yesterday with Chris, we both intend to restart the project in earnest over the next month. I can lay much of the blame for this lethargy firmly at my door. I cannot expect to jolly off to Dubai and Thailand for nearly 6 weeks and expect everything to push on at a pace. The forthcoming months must have direction, targets must be met: we are after all at the wonderful stage of ‘rebuild’, a moment that we have grafted long and hard to achieve.

The plan from Thursday is to write up another ‘programme of work’ which we “must stick to, this time!” because in the past “I have not been paying attention!” and “I must strive to become more organised, forceful, determined in particular get on t’internet!” I have consequently spent the entire morning on the phone catching up with previous and present suppliers, together with verifying the progress of many of the peripheral aspects of the project.

Jigsaw racing will supply the aluminium spacing block as well as the four extended plugs to modify the rear leaf spring to lower the overall ride creating the required, negative camber on the rear wheels: all this for £40.00. I also posed the question to Mark of Jigsaw, regarding our concerns on the subject of the Spax adjustable platform shockers, possibly their incompatibility with standard Spitfire road springs. His advice is the complete opposite of the logic of ‘softer, shorter’ to retain a low ride height. His hypothesis is that a much stronger yet shorter spring is the proven method to maintain the correct road height but also to produce improved  sensitive steering. The company produce the perfect 330lb. spring with a 9.5 inch ‘free length’ compressed down to an 8 inch ‘operating length’. They have a 2.5 inch inner dimension; again, this would be ideal for the Spax shockers, the flat end of the spring hugging the dome of the lower platform. This ‘harder, shorter’ spring should prevent the ‘nose diving effect’ that a softer spring would endorse. This concept is totally alien to that of Chris and Colin’s thinking, who are convinced that the way forward is to search out a ‘softer, lighter’ 100 lb. spring. 

Mark reminded me also, that the adjustable aspect of the Spax shocker is quite useless, as the mechanism can only be altered when the suspension unit is off the car, stating that, “It is impossible to alter the settings whilst on the car, that’s why I don’t sell them anymore; most people recognise the need to fine tune the suspension settings whilst in situ and not when the unit has been removed from the car”. I suggested that Chris should speak to Mark personally so that he could explain in more detail his thoughts about the correct ‘spring loading’. That should be fun!