Hi Alan Looking at the pictures of your car I saw that you had telescopic dampers fitted at the front of the car. I assume that they were on the car when you bought it? Do they work well and allow full suspension movement in droop ie jack car on chassis and see whether downward movement is limited by the shock.
The car has been in the family since 1953, with a restoration happening in the late 90's. The dampers have always been the same type s far as I am aware/can remember so I have nothing to compare it against. They do seem to work well though.
Hi Alan The reason I am interested is that I am thinking about doing something similar. I find with the friction shock absorbers there is a lot of bounce at the front end going over a significant bump that is absent at the rear when you have effective hydraulic dampers. The friction type at the front seems to give the car a very hard time! Can you confirm whether yours are mounted on the original friction shock absorber chassis and axle mounts or whether a non standard chassis fixing point has been used. When I looked at this I came to the conclusion that using the original mounting points would need a very short shock absorber and that it would'nt have sufficient stroke to prevent the unit bottoming out internally on full droop. Any comments/ dimensions would be veryhelpful. Gordon
Gordon, I fitted telescopic dampers to my PA in the late 1950s and they worked well. The car previously had very ineffective non standard lever arm Luvax units so I cannot say how they compare with friction units. Friction dampers are equally stiff in both bump and rebound whilst hydraulics are relatively soft in bump and much stiffer in rebound which probably explains the difference you feel between front and rear. I fabricated new brackets to replace the wing stay support castings which raised the upper mountings by about 3 3/4" and also new lower mountings which replaced the clamp plates under the springs. I can let you have drawings of the brackets if you wish, they do not require any new holes in the chassis.
Sorry to disappoint but you are talking to a complete car numpty here! I would happily send you some photos of how the dampers are fitted but the car is currently with my sister-in-law in Scotland as they have a joint share in the her.
If you don't get anywhere I'll be more than happy to ask her to take some close ups for you.
Hi Alan, Thanks for your last post. I would very much appreciate some photos. You can get my email addrewss by clicking on my ft of the page so that the pictures could be attached to the email. Many thanks Gordon