We spend a lot of time thinking about lever shocks, because they have to be right, and if they’re not right, the handling of the car suffers dramatically. Sometimes you can bounce a car and there’s nobody home.
In the video above, its pretty obvious that new lever shocks are needed, but in other situations, the weakness in the shock’s action is more subtle, taking the form of what we call a “transitional weakness”. If you don’t drive Sprites every day like I do, it might seem hard to detect, but I can identify a shock that’s all done because I drive so many Sprites over the same bumps day in and day out. I know how they’re supposed to perform, and I know when something’s amiss.
In the case of this handsome car above, which we are preparing for a client in California who purchased it from us, we’re doing a front disc brake conversion, and that gave us a chance to get more intimate with the lever shock’s action; as you can see in the video below, this set of lever shocks suffers from the “transitional weakness”.
The “dead spot” shown is an indication of a lever shock at the end of its service life. It may be fine for another 500-1000 miles, but eventually a shock that’s doing this will lose all dampening action, so things will go from bad to worse.
Sometimes these shocks leak, and once they loose their oil, they no longer dampen the ride. Lots of people like to fill the shocks back up when they think they’re no good, but filling them doesn’t address the underlying leak causing the fluid loss in the first place, and usually it just prolongs the inevitable. So I would take a long, hard look at your lever shocks (as found on all of your British classics–MGAs, MGBs, Morris Minors, Big Healeys, etc.); you’ll be rewarded with a great handling car once you put new lever shocks in place.
In our parts catalog, we carry four different solutions for this problem. We have an economy level shock that’s priced with cost in mind. We also have a premium lever shock that we have found to be more durable (but costs a little more up front). The third option is an uprated “Lemans” version of the premium lever shock, which is stiffer and still offers a great blend of performance and comfort. You can learn more about these first three options by clicking the photos below.
Lastly, we have a tube shock conversion for the front that allows you to do away with lever shocks forever, and that’s my favorite option. The only caveat with the tube shock conversion is you end up with a little more negative camber in your front end. This looks cool and macho on a sportier, racing stripe, minilite wheels racier car, but if you have a stock car that you want to look like the original, the tube shocks may give the front end more camber than you’d like, and a little more aggressive look that may or may not be desirable. You can see the additional camber in the photos below, as well as a link to view the conversion kit in our catalog.
We look forward to being of service with our parts catalog for any of your front end needs! Feel free to call us for more information about shocks, or about other things you may want to consider upgrading while you are changing your worn shocks, like some of the parts listed below!
