Managing Director – Bridge Classic Cars
The Bridge Classic Cars restoration technicians at our workshop have been working on sorting out the suspension of the 1959 Austin Healey Frogeye Sprite.
While performing road tests, our technician Dave noticed the handling of the Frogeye Sprite wasn’t behaving as it should do. So, he began to look into the issue and narrowed it down to the front suspension. Upon inspection, he found a few areas which needed attention.
One of the bolts which holds the lower arm into the mounts had a lot of freeplay and should be tight with little to no movement for and aft. Dave found the backside of the bolt had not been rotated correctly and let the nut side be tightened down and torqued correctly. With that, Dave also discovered that there had been previous welding repairs carried out to the front suspension, but in another area, a gap had opened up where the bracket had separated from the frame.
So, he welded this area back up as tight as possible which wouldn’t allow the drivers’ side control arm and track rods to move independently to the car. After that, Dave went through to recheck and torque each part to the correct specifications to get the car ready to go back out for road tests.
