A little experiment

In one of my earlier posts I reported on the new rear axle links for 't Kreng. One of their disadvantages is that I now have to find a new location for the rear anti roll bar, as the mounting points to the lower link will be gone with this new set up.

In order to give me an indication on what the rear ARB does or doesn't on this car I decided on a little experiment. I removed the rear ARB and took the car for a little spin in the area. First impression, driving carefully to warm up everything gently, was rather positive. The car felt as she had done since I fitted the rear coil-overs.

But with everything on temperature I put my foot down a bit more. Normally the car's handling should have been biased toward under-steer, which she did but the rear could be made to step out quite easily, actually to easily. There was also noticeable more roll at the rear, which was hardly surprising of course, but still much less compared to the DHC. Also the balance wasn't as good as it used to be, it just didn't feel right. But the biggest problem was revealed on a roundabout. As there was no traffic I decided to provoke a reaction from the rear suspension by suddenly changing direction. With the roll bar fitted this wouldn't have created much of a problem, but now it provoked a rather vicious reaction from the rear. Actually so vicious that even at under the speed limit there (50 km/h in 2nd gear) the car decided to bite back, and point her nose in the opposite direction ... oops. At least that showed me quite clearly that this spring/shock-absorber set-up really needs a decent ARB at the rear. To even further proof this point I took her onto a wide and fairly smooth gravel track. Scary and rather unpredictable sum it up quite nicely.

So on returning home I quickly re-fitted the ARB and took her out for another spin just to see how she really should be, which was rather good fun and much more confidence inspiring. So now comes the next task, finding a suitable ARB and an alternative location. For this I will use this set up as my guide line ...

And I was also reminded of the fact that the clutch release bearing is starting to get noisy when releasing the clutch after gear changes. Looks like it's going to be a busy winter.

And for those waiting for my pictures from Club Triumphs RBRR 2012, I am still busy with arranging my new computer. Took me all afternoon to get all the screen and calibration software going under Microsoft. Hopefully I have everything up and running next week, so a little teaser of Gurtie at the Struie Hill viewpoint in glorious Scottish weather ...

Reconnaissance 24th edition Nachtrit

Last weekend we enjoyed some lovely autumn weather. So what better to do than finalise the route for this year’s edition of the Nachtrit. As we both have been occupied with other things over the past 6 months we decided to make it a little easier and use a shorter route from the past and add some interesting twisty bits to get the mileage up to around 280 kilometres. It is again a very nice mix between through roads, nice smooth flowing country lanes and in a few places ... mmm ... very narrow farm tracks. But they are all surfaced one way or another.

This year we will be heading towards Beffe again. As a result of this the route takes us past the back of the old Impéria factory in Nessonveaux. Famous for its test track partly on the roof of the factory buildings.

But of course mostly for the fact that they assembled and produced Standard and Triumph cars for the European market in the 50’s. They also thought it a good idea to design a more luxurious version of the TR2, the so called Triumph “Coupé Francorchamps”. Sadly Triumph didn’t see much in this car, so in the end only 22 left the gates of the factory.

Luckily the route has much more on offer, also driving wise. Which is a good thing as you won’t be able to admire much of the very fine views and buildings as you drive past them in the darkness. A few of the driving highlights in this year’s edition projected in Google Earth;

All in all well pleased with the route, so to end a fine day we enjoyed a nice glass of beer on one of the many terraces we encountered along the way ....