New front suspension

I would just say a BIG THANK YOU to both Mick Sollis from Southern GT & Frank Catt from Wealden Engineering for coming to my aid and helping me fix my TS40 in just a few day to enable me to take part in this weekend antics at Dunsfold’s Wing’s & Wheels.

The mission all started on Sunday when I noticed that my GT's steering was starting to feel more noticeably odd, and on further investigation I found that both my lower wishbones were bent quite considerably, this I found very worrying indeed as I have driven the car at speed on many occasions and if they failed it would be quite messy.

So one phone call to Mick Sollis and a complete set of wishbones with rod ends arrive at my door on Thursday morning and if you bear in mind that he had to wait for my old suspension parts to arrive at his workshop before he could start to manufacture the new ones. On top of that a very busy Frank Catt with Geoff managed to fit me in and not only could set-up the car but as it was in no state to be driven or trailed they both came over to my house yesterday and set-up the car’s front geometry, now that's what I call customer service.

I can only say that it has transformed my car, the car feels much more composed and I feel more confident driving it and to be honest it has always felt a little bit of a handful especially on bumpy roads but after my little shake down drive yesterday my car has never felt so good and as a bonus quite a few of the cars little rattles have disappeared.

So if anyone is thinking of changing their front suspension I would highly recommend both Mick & Frank as their knowledge is second to none.

Thanks again guy’s for such a good job in such an unrealistic time scale.

 Chris.

Chris,
Would this be relevant to the article in the September Fortyfication?

Chris,
Would this be relevant to the article in the September Fortyfication?
See you tomorrow at Dunsfold, weather permitting.

Hi Tony,

I noticed this had happened a couple of days before I received my copy of Fortyication, but I did speak to Desmond about this issue as I was aware that he had one of his lower wishbones break on the trackday at Donnington.

See you tomorrow.

Bent - and broken !

This looks like the bump stop is reached regularely and hard. Thus resulting in the leftovér force bending the A-arm via the resistance of the not more moving shock.
One should hear that shock blocking before or ?

TOM

My front a-arms meet the same demise, two sets! As Tom suggest, I was told the shock is bottoming. But not the case, full travel occurs on my suspension without interference from the shock. IMO, the original a-arms are not sufficient for aggressive driving. My remedy thus far has been self fabricated "heavy duty" a-arms.

There have been a handful of cases where the front lower wishbone rear legs have bent.

This has been caused by the wishbones being pushed beyond their intended design limits which was for normal road car use only.

In all cases the bent wishbones had been used for the track.

All of these wishbones were 10 to 15 years old.

The current wishbones supplied are manufactured from materials with a much higher specification and the matter has been resolved.

We now also supply a heavy duty suspension package upgrade specifically designed for track use which features rod ends.

For those of you who have followed the link here from the GTS tuning Web site and its owner Darren George here are a few other links you may also find helpful.

gts tuning
GTS still trading?
GTS TUNING
Darren George
GTS still around ??
Hasn't changed
BAD SERVICE AGAIN
GTS Tuning advertising
Gts tunning
GTS ~ Recent Experiences wanted please
GTS, how NOT to run a company!!!
darren gts the joke
gts
Customer Service
CUSTOMER SERVICE
GTS Tuning - Problem with order?
DARREN!!!!

And there are a whole lot more at http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/index.php

Thanks

Andy

Andy Sheldon said:

The current wishbones supplied are manufactured from materials with a much higher specification and the matter has been resolved.

We now also supply a heavy duty suspension package upgrade specifically designed for track use which features rod ends.

Click to expand...

I don't see what GTS has to do with with inadequate suspension wishbones!

It follows from the quote that if you do a track day, you need an upgrade from the current supply (suited to road use only) that in fact had to be improved from the earlier offering that needed to be strengthened (not up to the task for road use).
Wishbone failure could be chatostrophic, a car manufacturer would be doing a recall foc in a case like this.
Lots of car builds take years to get to being driven so if you have the earlier type check it out first!

Steve

Steve

GTS has started a rubbishing campaign against us since we contacted them about design and copyright infringement.

They have posted links from their website to this thread stating that our wishbones fail within 15 minutes of being used which is very clearly not the case.

We have made the above post to defend ourselves and make it clear to all the business ethics of Darren George and GTS Tuning.

We consider his remarks as Libel and will be contacting our Solicitor first thing on Monday morning.

Looks like we will be joining a very long line.

Thanks

Andy

Andy,

Is there any way of knowing which suspension components you have just by looking at them?
My chassis and suspension have been sat in someone's garage for a while, and I have no idea how old they are.

Regards,
Jon

Jon

As stated in my previous post they are fine for normal road use.

If you are going off road, driving over speed bumps at 80 mph, jumping of ramps, intending to curb the car or crash I would recommend an upgrade.

Thanks

Andy

Andy,
prehaps you'd like to answer my separate post and confirm when you upgraded the materials to the new design, so all Tornado owners know if they have a problem, should they wish to take their cars on a track
Regards,
Andy