Lotus Europa Community

Nice job! On caliper clearance could you move the lower attachment link further inboard on the control arm?  As you state, the caliper is very close to hitting the vertical link at full lock, I just cannot remember how I resolved. Anyway would a wheel spacer help with clearance at lock, if you have body clearance at the wheel well lip? The increased track might be advantageous if rules allow.

I have now finished my set up. The ends of the anti-roll bar had to be shortened quite a bit. The original overall length of the bar, before I bent it, was 1470 mm. With this basis, you will always have enough excess material to cut after installation. At the end, I cut both ends of the bar so that they end round about 155 mm behind the center line of the front upright and damper. Longer ends could have touched my tires at full lock. But my tyres are 8" wide. With thinner wheels, you may be able to leave the ends longer.

Now, I have two limiting factors for adjustment: On the hard end of the adjustment scale it's the brake caliper, which could make contact with the link. On the soft end it is the angle of the link itself. As mentioned above, I manfufactured a special double-threaded nut to connect the link to the lower wishbone. In an ideal world the link would always be mounted exactly right-angled between wishbone and anti-roll bar. Clearly speaking, the link should have a perfectly upright position. But for that, the double-nut would need to be longer and ideally even have to be adjustable in length. Unfortunatey, this length is determined by the necessity to avoid contact with the wheel under full lock. Thus, my double-nut can't be longer than 35 mm. Again, thinner wheels could mean a bigger range. The softer I choose to adjust, the more will the angle of the link move away from being right-angled.

Something that causes me a small headache before the test drive is the tiny grub screw, which fixes the slide clamp. Maybe I'll put a bigger one in (bigger thread). But these clamps are sold like that by Merlin Motorsport. Thus, they should have thought about that, shouldn't they?

There are two brackets and the blower assembly bolts to them with 3 rubber isolators … obviously I need new ones but the motor doesn’t work so a problem for the future ….

I think you make good points, Dave.  The big issue is that rarely do people plan that they're putting aware a car for years.  Most figure they'll be back working on it next week...which then turns into a month, then a year, and so it goes.  But you're still right.

Vince

If I recall they are Nankang 175/185. Can't recall the pressures though.