Laurence Wilson

Okay guys, I've contacted Steve and Nige re. the possibility of a arranging a breakfast blat to go with this — but for the sake of attendance, we'll review this in a month for a possible June / July date. When the sun is out Regards, Laurence

So, I'm counting eight names on this thread. To those of you who have expressed an interest, how does Sunday March 24th fit with your diaries? Plan would be to open the factory for the morning. We will provide food. I'm also thinking this might be a good excuse for a breakfast blat? Laurence

Hello Guys, Yes, on the back of a recent thread I figured it would be a good idea to throw this open to all. What I proposed to Ian was we open up the factory for a day to show how the shocks are assembled and give some 'hands-on' guidance in how they can be revalved. Topics I imagine covering are: o How does a monotube shock work? o How do I read a dyno plot? o What is low speed damping and how does the adjuster affect it? o What is high speed damping and how do the shims affect it? o How does the piston affect the shape of the damping curve? o How do I revalve my shock absorbers? I'm thinking this would be a Sunday event. We're on a large industrial estate with plenty of parking on the weekends. I want to make it fun, so we'll look at laying on food, too. I'm open to other suggestions. Have you got any questions I haven't listed above? Laurence

David: sorry — missed your post, there. If you're really keen to know how you would predict a damper force/velocity curve, I might point you in the direction of Milliken and Optimum G (see the Technical Papers). But what we're discussing here are incremental changes — the sort of thing you might do in the pit or paddock.

Nick: We use a 1/2" ID shim but we also keep some metric sizes. As I understand it from talking to you when you popped round you can set a shock up to what ever bump/rebound curve you want if you have the right shims. There really is nothing clever about it This is too good an article to miss ! I'd be there like a shot, pen in hand, but we now live in France .... Someone, please ... More than happy to make this happen

Quoting bluenose: How's the rebuild going, must be nearly there now? Sort of Was it Myles who christened his car Project Scope Creep? I appreciate the true definition of that phrase, now ;) That and I'm still in the throws of house buying — offered on a flat in October and got involved in a bidding war — so I haven't had a whole lot of time to dedicate to it. But it's still there and all the expensive bits have been bought 😬 Thinking about it some more: if someone wants to pen an article for Low Flying, in addition to demonstrating the rebuild process we have the shock dyno here — so we could explain how to read the dyno plots and illustrate how changes made affect the performance. I hear a lot of people arguing the merits of different builds and 'special' valvings — dampers that are soft in bump and stiff in rebound or equal bump to rebound — but there really is no art to taking them apart. It's a lot easier than building an engine Perhaps this is an opportunity to dispel some myths?

Quoting bluenose: Chris This is the video for the Quantum Shock revalving Ride Tech website is quite interesting. here Nick Who's the handsome fella in that video ? How you doing, Nick? Quoting Rob Walker: It would make an interesting tech article for Low Flying That could be arranged. In fact, I'd be plenty willing to host a 'how-to' at Unit 9 if there was enough interest. Edited by - Laurence Wilson on 23 Jan 2013 22:13:01

Hello Charlie, 10mm sounds like a lot to me — about the most I would try in one go. I would suggest 5mm at a time. Be mindful of the changes you make: go too high and the back will fall over as you turn in, and it'll over-steer 😬

Charlie, Since you've identified it to be weight transfer, I'd leave the ARB alone for the minute. If your shocks are adjustable, you could try increasing the rebound damping at the front to help keep the front of the car down as you feed the power in. If they're single adjustable only, you can still try going stiffer — we valve ours soft on bump and stiff on rebound, so any adjustment has a bigger affect on the rebound damping. If they're not adjustable, raising the ride height at the rear will help by putting more weight over the front of the car in the first place. Or you could try loosening your harnesses and leaning forward when you get on the gas

Trevor: No, I'm afraid it has drums. But I'm working on a disc conversion for my own car for the English that uses Peugeot calipers, floating rotors and aluminium bells. If there's a market for it, I could be persuaded to do something for the Ital, too. Feel free to Blatmail me

Cheers Neil YHBM.

Bump! New parts

I will be in touch, Nick

And for anyone tackling this in the future, the relevant paragaph in the Haynes manual, page 2•14: The engine must be turned so that No.1 piston is at TDC (top dead centre) on the compression stroke ... Turn the engine until the line next to the 'T' mark on the timing rotor aligns with the static timing mark, which is a notch in the inspection hole rim, and the IN and EX marks on the intake and exhaust camshaft sprockets respectively are facing away from each other and are flush with the cylinder head top surface. Thank you all I think I'll be making myself a nice tool like yours this week, Richard 😬 Nick: Once I have my engine back together, I'm going to begin cutting tubes out of the chassis Would it still be okay for me to pop round and take some measurements of your car in the near future? Edited by - Laurence Wilson on 19 Feb 2012 19:30:46

Courtesy of BoSS: ... if I needed TDC accurately I'd use a dial gauge (DTI). This is what I did when setting up verniers, you need a bracket to hold the DTI and a welding rod extension that touches the piston crown screwed into the DTI nose. This gives you far better accuracy than a spot on a crank pulley or camshaft. Good luck. Now why didn't I think of that Evidently, I'm lacking in common sense today And Richard, too Nick: I have an original cover. It's an unmodified pulse rotor I would require. You wouldn't happen to have one of those left over, would you? But I'm looking through the Haynes manual now, to see if I can confirm my assumption that it is TDC on cylinder number one. A dial gauge would be the way to go if it is.