After the booboo with the steering rack gaiter, Frosh was
lifted again and the gaiter swap and I must say, I’m getting very good at
crawling under and swap these oily pieces of rubber…😒
The suspension nuts and bolts were checked and the nipples were
greased, ready for another spirited drive. This little Frosch is a lovely thing to drive however when changing gears, I
must remember it is not a dog race gearbox… take it easy 😅
On bumpy (straight) back roads, the front shocks bottomed out
causing a little bit of tyre rub. In tight spirited corners, tyres lost their
grip momentarily and squealed as they gained it back. 🙈🙉🙊
The front shocks will definitely be rebuilt with uprated motorbike
fork oil; a mixture of 20W and 30W – from some readings, 30W on its own can be
too thick and cause some damage to the mechanism. Ideally, I will be aiming for 22 to 25W.
The rear will be fitted with the PME Panhard kit received
late last week. Initial fitting test showed the fuel tank will have to
come off to ease drilling and fit. As it is not urgent, some inner spreader
backplates will be made from 2mm steel sheet.
As with the old Caterham, a spare washer bottle found its
way to the engine bay. It’s there to collect the excess coolant spat out by the
7Lbs radiator cap.
Following
the few tweaks on the front suspensions, carburetors and cooling system, the weather decided to be “kind” so I went for a drive – just over 28 miles.
The road was a little greasy and the 1st
impression is these Vredestein tyres are rubbish. After a few miles and despite
the tyres, it is clear the car handles better, no roll or dive, predictable, relatively reactive steering –
a really nice run-about.
The 948cc engine pulls nicely up to 3.5krpm and then, it
becomes a little lazy; this is where a better breathing system would help
(working on it 😇)…
As I had never fitted the roof or the side-screens on the car, I gave it a try and within 10 minutes, took the side-screens off... they interfered with the wing mirrors.
Really nice but yours truly did a “booboo”… As I got
back to the garage, I noticed a splash of oil and had a look… the new steering
rack gaiter split; when I first set it and filled the rack with gearbox oil,
the tracking was out by 1 turn on the driver side. The steering setup was
sorted out but, I forgot to reset the gaiter… so it was twisted (1 turn) and it
split as soon as I put full lock…
On the check-down run, I found the car was lacking of front grip and was behaving like a boat… The steering was a little hard (which could have been explained by the larger tyres) and somewhat approximate.
Reading the suspension section of the book “MG Midget & Austin Healey Sprite high performance manual”, I decided to aim for a “hard
road” set up; something a little stiffer than classic fast road and much softer
than full race setup… basically, a comfortable hillclimb set up:
360Lbs x 8.5” springs from magic midget - @ the
limit of “hard road” and “competition” in the manual cited above
11/16” anti-roll bar kit for frogeye spares - “hard
road” in the manual cited above
After further investigations around the steering area, I
noticed that the passenger side gaiter was split and a bit dry 😟. A bit of
lithium grease was injected and the steering became much smoother to operate. A
new “gaiter/trackrod end” kit was ordered… from ANG.
Steering Rack
The steering arms were marked to ease resetting the geometry
and things were put apart. Once the old cracked gaiters were removed, the
steering rod joints were lubricated and covered with the new gaiters. Once the gaiter
small end was sealed, the gaiter was partially filled with some 75w90 LSD gearbox
oil and then closed. Further gearbox oil was added to the steering rack.
Kingpin Trunnions
The original trunnions with the cracked bushes were removed
and the moto-build were not fitted…😣
The inner bore of the trunnion was too small, 50
micron undersized causing a press-fit condition rather than a clearance fit. 😤
The bush area on the trunnion also interfered with
the brake disc shield backplate.
The disc backplate was trimmed, 20mm was removed to clear
the trunnion arm.
The bore was polished but it was not enough… in order to
achieve adequate kingpin rotation, 2 bronze thrust bearings had to be stacked up
shifting the trunnion up by 3.75mm. In doing so, the camber angle is increased roughly
by 0.5 to 0.75°.
Note that the 2nd thrust bearings and fulcrum pins were supplied by frogeye spares.
I could use ratchets and I did not need to mess around with mole
grips etc. as showed in the youtube video.
Instead of reusing the spring support plate fasteners, certified
high tensile (8.8) M8 fasteners were fitted.
Note: as the car gets
lowered, the camber angle decrease going to towards greater negative camber.
For the performance manual, every lowered inch reduces the camber by 1°.
With the new springs
of a car with a steel bonnet, the lowering is ¾”. The camber alteration from
the lowering is cancelled by the trunnion shift cited above.
The final static
negative camber should be about 1.5 to 1.7°. This will be fully looked at when
the car goes for a geo set-up.
Antiroll bar (ARB)
This Frosch is still fitted with the original bottom
wishbone that does not include the ARB mount holes. Adding holes is not
difficult but knowing where they are supposed to be is critical as it will
affect the tension properties between the ARB and the rest of the suspension. This
was critical on the lotus Elise so I thought some researches were needed and I
found the following on a spridget forum…
And I drilled my wishbone accordingly...
When putting together dissimilar material on the Elise
(steel to aluminium for example), it is good practice to paint in between a tacky
compound called “Duralac”.As I still
have a can, I put some between the freshly drilled wishbone and the ARB mount.
Due to time constraints, I used the fastening hardware
supplied with the kit but I was not impressed with the bolts.
In between Christmas festive events, I put together a list
of things that I wanted to look at. One of them is the engine airflow. When accelerating,
the car pushes decently up to 3 krpm and then, it suffers from asthma…
Frosch came with some SU thin
chrome air filter directly mounted to the HS2 housing; the inlet flow should be improved replacing these tiny filters with a set of ram pipes purchased from Minispares. And as I was going to play with the carbs, I decided to fit new fuel lines too...
When I first opened the box of goodies, I was a
little puzzled with the ram pipe design; for some reason, the mounting holes of these pipes are
threaded and I am not sure what the intention was. 😵
As
the SU carb holes are threaded, I decided to drill out the ram pipe threaded holes to an "elongated clearance fit" (8x9mm) which allows for a small amount of
fitting flexibility. To clear the bolt heads, the sides of each pipe were ground
a little.
When putting apart the chrome filters, I found that the HS2s
were mated with HS1 gaskets – 1 ⅛”
dia instead of 1 ¼” dia 😱.
The flow was not streamlined, it was also
restricted too… The ram pipe and the correct gasket should improve this.
While mating the ram pipes to the carbs, I checked that
the mouths of the pipe and carb aligned smoothly hence the elongated holes mentioned earlier.
Et voila...
...with the RAMAIR Filters and the new fuel lines!
Since the bonnet was up, the radiator coolant hoses were swapped for a new silicone set, new BMW spec-compliant coolant was poured into the system and a new 7Lbs rad cap was fitted (the old one was 4Lbs as fitted on Austin Healey 100). Why BMW coolant??? simple, I had a bottle left sitting doing nothing. On other cars including the elise race car I normally use VAG G12/G13 coolant.
No, this is
not a spelling mistake; the little 1960 Frogeye spent 30 years in Germany hence
Frosch (Frog in the language of the Grimm Brothers).
From its
service history, my Frogeye/Bugeye was in Scotland before immigrating to West
Germany in the late 80’s and returned to the motherland – the UK – in 2018.
In this 30
year period, the car was on and off the road and received various modifications
including:
Hazard light kit
Front disc brake conversion (using
last 60’s Spridget parts)
1500 midget front springs
Rear telescopic shock absorbers
Extra radiator fan
Weber 45 Carburettor
3-2-1 Exhaust manifold
Electric fuel pump
Black Mohair roof
Black respray
Chrome luggage rack
Various chrome adds-on
Triumph GT6 wheels
When the car
came back to our shores, it ran too rich and could be hesitant. A fuel pressure
regulator was missing and the Weber needed to be tuned properly. The previous
owner decided to go back to basics: mechanical fuel pump, Twin SU HS2 carburetors, and standard exhaust manifold.
The following
picture is a caption of the original internet ad and shows how the car was when I purchased it:
This very
small car (about 1 foot smaller all around than the Elise) is full of charm and makes people smile when they see it 😍. As my daughter puts it:
“it’s a Princess
car” (not an Austin Princess thankfully).
Mid-December 2019, I gave it a quick heath inspection and went
for a shakedown drive. With its 660kg powered by 948cc engine producing ~40bhp,
this road runner should not get me into trouble with the Rozzers. This was a lot of
fun, taking the corner barely touching the brake trying to keep the momentum.
And yes, I
broke down during the first proper drive… 😅 The ignition cable under the
dashboard got undone.
Since then,
the wiring was fixed, the luggage rack and the front bumper were removed and I
am slowly getting accounted with the car.
As I play around with it, I’m drafting a list of
things that need to be serviced or modified to suit my preferences.
As mentioned
elsewhere, I like sports cars and classic cars. Since my 20s, I have been involved with
Mazda MX5, Triumph Spitfire, Morgans, Lotus Elise, Caterham Seven and now a
British old-timer: a 60 years old Austin Healey Frogeye Sprite.
The most significant car was the Elise S1; I have
been this car custodial for 13 years, about 95000miles – many of them on track.
When I acquired the car in July 2006, it was mostly standard (118BHP and
118FtLbs); some lotus cosmetic “upgrades” had been added.
As many young single chaps without much responsibility, I
started to play with the car and one thing leading to another, I took it a
track and I got “intoxicated”. The virus got the best of me and I started to
modify the car and race it in local club series…
This is where people either
roll their eyes or produce a little smile knowing that I did the same stupid
things they did.
In 2019, my Elise produced 180bhp @ 7000rpm and 137 to 145
FtLbs between 3500 and 6500 rpm and weighed 735kg. The 0 to 60mph was rather quick and 100mph was effortlessly reachable.
While this Elise is technical simple (1990’s technology,
mechanical), repair and services can be laborious. For example, to change the
radiator, half of the bodywork has to come out. This is itself is not complex
but requires time and space. Adjusting the accessory belt involves taking off a wheel,
liner and then you can do the work through a minuscule aperture.
As the Elise had become a little too much of a track focus
car, I made the decision to go back to something I could enjoy more on public
roads hence the Frogeye.
In the following publications, I will discuss the specifications of this Frogeye as I bought it and I will explain how I want it to evolve.
