[72cat]

To accomodate the wide rear tyres they put in an extra leaf/blade, anyone got an opinion on this, ie. would it affect the handling [the small amount of handling she has] and road holding, on the 72 [with 235/60/15's front and rear] the road holding is perfect, it sticks to the road like glue, the 70 bounces around all over the place.

 

[72cat]

Guys ?????

 

[cougarguy]

I dont think an extra leaf would be the way to go get a rear stabilzer for it or maybe new springs if those are origanal then they are pretty worn just by the years they have had weight on them.

 

[72cat]

I am also not to happy about the extra leaf, explain rear stablilser please. Will add springs to my 'getting very long' to do list.

 

[modifiedmark]

Hmmm? Bounces all over the road? The shocks control the bounce. Try this bounce the car by pushing down hard on the bumper. If the shocks are good it will come up one time and stop. If it bounces more than that your shocks need replacing. An extra leaf in the rear shouldnt bother any. mm

 

[greggieatthebat]

Or the extra spring could be making the rear suspension too hard, such that the suspension doesn't compress and can't absorb the bumps.... (opposite end of the spectrum from Mark's comment)

 

[72cat]

Thats what the PO said, that the rear suspension was too hard and that we should pop a 50kg bag of cement in the boot to weight it down. But something else bothers me, the tyres in the back are 265/50/14's, so what does making it higher help.

 

[greggieatthebat]

If it's like my old tires, I had to raise the rear end because the fender would rub/cut the tires if the suspension compressed too far (because the tires were wide and would stick out the side. We raised the back with air shocks, other people put stiffer/higher springs back there.
My dad's old nissan truck had stiffer-than-stock springs on the rear because the previous owner towed a boat with it. It had a really rough (bouncy) ride unless the bed was loaded down; when there was a lot of weight in the rear it rode nicely. This is probably why your PO said to put the cement bag in the trunk (boot).

 

[72cat]

Okay, well thats why they made it higher then, cos the tyres do stick out the side, I think it looks cool, pity the front ones do the exact opposite. I am going to try and get BFG's for the front, I can't really afford to get new rims and can't find the ones I want in any case, I want ones similar to the 72's, must be deep, but the only things they have here are the std car ones, no depth, deep ones are normally 16" and the 15" ones look crappy. Just got to find out what the width is of the rims in the front, and then hopefully I can get 215's. BFG's are damn expensive here, but it looks stupid having different tyres in the front to the ones in the rear, the one front one is 'Silverstone' and the other one is 'Bridgestone", now I know the race circuit Silverstone, but never heard of a tyre by that name