BS Nymph in Jersey

[edgedj]

You know what, it's pretty good in Jersey for a Nymph but I think a roof would be a mandatory extra for the UK for sure!

Good progress on the centralisation of the front suspension, it all lines up nicely now with a clear sight line under the car from the middle of the front wishbone mounts through to the tunnel - this was off before and I did not try to line this up under here - it's lined up as a result of getting the wheels the right distance from the body each side - kinda confirmation the first builder just drilled it in the wrong place.

So on to what I believe is a design flaw in the Nymph mould, you can see the front mounts don't align with the tub, the tub looks completely original and not messed with so any other Nymphers might want to check this out too as if I just clamp these bolts up it's going to put both the tub and the suspension arms under a fair bit of stress. I'm thinking of getting a piece of delrin machined with this (maybe 10 degree)? taper and that should hold it all in nicely.

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[edgedj]

the natural balance point where the tub isn't being strained has a fairly thick spacer being 13mm at the front holes and 17mm at the rear with a taper shape. Here's what I need to make in plan form

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[moose]

Hi Dave. The front springs look to be very soft as you would expect on a light car. If you have poly bushes in the car you should be able to disconnect the dampers and the arms should lift up and down with next to zero resistance when you get you brackets all set up true. If you have rubber bushes then they will add to the spring rate by a small amount as you are twisting the rubber to raise and lower the arms ans with light or soft springs the difference may be noticeable. If the arms were all out of alignment as well then that would also alter the rate.

[edgedj]

Hi Dave. The front springs look to be very soft as you would expect on a light car. If you have poly bushes in the car you should be able to disconnect the dampers and the arms should lift up and down with next to zero resistance when you get you brackets all set up true. If you have rubber bushes then they will add to the spring rate by a small amount as you are twisting the rubber to raise and lower the arms ans with light or soft springs the difference may be noticeable. If the arms were all out of alignment as well then that would also alter the rate.

Spacer now installed and as you say, the arms move up and down with single finger pressure - really nice and smooth.

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[moose]

nice one. what you now might find is the factory or advised spring rates are not correct ! They were based on rubber bushes and the binding effect they had. See how it feels on the road and maybe experiment with spring poundage if you feel the need, what you will have now is a better handling car anyway. I spent many hours on the imp and aligned all the brackets and managed to get all dimensions on the car in every direction to within less than 1 mm. In the past i went with what I was told "old school knowledge" Monte's etc but back then they did not have such good dampers and poly bushes etc. My spring rates I use on the rally car and what I offer with my dampers for track, road, rally and race vary a lot from what was on offer in the past.

I use string lines and corner weight scales to set he car up.

[edgedj]

nice one. what you now might find is the factory or advised spring rates are not correct ! They were based on rubber bushes and the binding effect they had. See how it feels on the road and maybe experiment with spring poundage if you feel the need, what you will have now is a better handling car anyway. I spent many hours on the imp and aligned all the brackets and managed to get all dimensions on the car in every direction to within less than 1 mm. In the past i went with what I was told "old school knowledge" Monte's etc but back then they did not have such good dampers and poly bushes etc. My spring rates I use on the rally car and what I offer with my dampers for track, road, rally and race vary a lot from what was on offer in the past.

I use string lines and corner weight scales to set he car up.

Will see how it goes with the spring rates. These are a very light springs for sure as they sit at mighty different heights with or without a driver and front passenger.

One question, you might know the answer to, with regards to the angle of the rack; I'm wondering what the best angle to set this at is? I think the best angle is the one where the tie rod ends are operating as close to an imaginary line drawn from the rear pivots to the front pivots going through the rack. That way it will reduce bump steer to a minimum. This Nymph had zero bump steer before I started and I don't want to introduce any now.

[edgedj]

good news and bad news for the new year. Just finished restoring an old Springalex wheel I’ve had for
ages, that’s the good news. Bad news the front suspension that’s now in the centre of the car has revealed that the rear has the same offset to the side resulting in some vague handling. Oh well, looks like I’ll be pulling the rear suspension off too now. Yay

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[edgedj]

Moose was right, the bushes made quite a difference, I lost about an inch of ride height and couldn't get it back. Just fitted a new set of springs at the front from D Faulkner Springs. I had nominally 65lb x 13" ones and replaced these with 90lb x 12" and unfortunately I discovered on removal of my old springs that they have at some point been attacked by an angle grinder and have lost about 2" of their proper length so my rationale of 13" down to 12" but higher rate would have been perfect only I went from 11" to 12" with a higher rate so gained quite a bit of ride height, with the adjustable shocks on their lowest setting I'm probably only 1/2" too high now but the change in handling is amazing, hard to describe but it just handles brilliantly. I think it's the lack of diving and rolling around, feels a bit like a giddy mini with the handling at the front now. Anyone else with a Nymph I reckon a 90lb x 11" front spring would be amazing, I'm going to see how these settle and when it's light I'll post a pic of the very slight positive camber I've got, which to be honest turns to negative when I sit in it.

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[edgedj]

very slight positive camber without driver, I think I'll call this a win and stop here.

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[impmann]

I drove Jim Cox's white Nymph last year - absolutely wonderful handling. I don't think he 'does' internet stuff but when I next see him (probably at the Full English Weekend - soz) I'll ask him whats fitted to his.

[mikeyhearne]

Nymph kits came with a different set of springs to replace the standard imp ones .
I asked some time back but nobody knew what they were .
I had some made for mine a bit ago but will have to find the paperwork to see what i bought .

[moose]

The car needs to be at full laden weight to check camber so if you drive with a full tank of fuel and two people in the car that is the weight it needs to be to set camber angle. If you want to see the camber angle change support the car on stands at normal ride height with a wheel removed, take the spring off the damper and re-fit the wheel then jack the arm up on the side with missing spring. From the wheel sat on the ground to the damper fully compressed and you will see the increase in neg camber. The amount of camber required depends on the tyre side wall and the width of the tyre. On the rally car with 155/70/13 tyres I run .5 deg neg camber and 3 mm toe in that is set with the car at the weight of me and co-driver,full tank of fuel and anything else that we carry like jack and toolkit. Too much neg at static and so much more neg is added under hard braking and cornering you over compensate for the amount of tyre sidewall roll and you loose the max amount of tyre contact patch, too little and you can never get enough load to roll the tyre to achieve full contact patch. If you sit in the car and roll it backwards and forwards, turning the steering full lock left to right a few times this settles the tyre contact patch to the road and then get someone to check the camber angle you will see what the camber is actually at when driving on the road.

[edgedj]

get someone to check the camber angle you will see what the camber is actually at when driving on the road.

Well in a Nymph, you don't need someone else, you just lean out and have a look at the tyre yourself, no really you do!

[The Nun]

get someone to check the camber angle you will see what the camber is actually at when driving on the road.

Well in a Nymph, you don't need someone else, you just lean out and have a look at the tyre yourself, no really you do!

You could end up falling out with your passenger doing that

[edgedj]

Had use of a lift owned by a friend today and stuck the Nymph on it to do a checkover of the underside. Really please to see everything is doing well, no problems with the GRP and although the rear suspension and subframe aren't quite as clean as the powder coated front stuff, they are faring very well and certainly no need to pull them off for similar treatment just yet. One thing I did do was check all the hose and cable routings and make sure they are all cable tied in good rattle and rub free locations, made a world of difference to the drive home, the lack of probably 10 very minor rubs a clunks as things moved around.

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[Uncle Henry]

Very useful images. I wonder it the floor mould was taken directly from an Imp floor ? Great to see your Nymph is in fine fettle, I guess living on an island means Seasalt corrosion might be a problem for all-steel vehicles...

UH

[oli]

Interested to know where that silencer box came from, and it's dimensions, if you have them?

[Uncle Henry]

Looks "Janspeed-ish" to me. I have a used one in my garage.

AG

[edgedj]

the whole exhaust is from Maniflow, it's their 'mellow note' silencer on the small bore manifold. I don't like loud exhausts and this one sounds good to me without being loud

[edgedj]

So after rebuilding and re-centering the front suspension, swapping springs and sorting the tracking I've arrived at this which I thought might be useful for any other Nymph owners out there. Handling is fantastic on this now and ride quality is really nice.

Rear springs
260 lb from clan club

Front springs
2.25" ID 10.5" 90 lb from D Faulkner springs

Toe-in front 0.5 degrees
Toe-in rear 2.25 degrees

Bit of negative camber at the rear and the fronts are pretty near vertical.

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[edgedj]

front suspension now really smooth and solid over the worst of Jersey roads (and we have some really terrible ones). The rear however is plagued with a clunk that I just can't seem to locate. I'm certain it's damper related but baffled as to where, last place to check now is the top mounts as I think there may be some bad metal to metal or slack in them but I have to drop the shocks off to try and sort that. A job for the week...

I thought I'd found the problem this weekend with this driver's side misalignment, so I glassed up the old holes, drilled new and at least the damper is sitting without binding the trailing arm but no joy on the clonks, they are still there

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[The Nun]

Time to try some different shocks?

[edgedj]

Time to try some different shocks?

Yeah I reckon so, ordered a pair of Gaz shocks last night. Will spend some time making sure they are perfectly aligned when they arrive too as it could be the random body alignment of the Nymph hole drillings that's caused the early demise of these. Perhaps if they don't run perfectly in line both horizontally and vertically with the bottom pivot then the damage may ensue from that. They are after all only designed to accept three planes of movement (vertical, fore/aft and rotation). The front suspension is night and day better with that custom shim I made for the front suspension carrier plate to make the angle perfect

[bazzateer]

I had a knock at the rear, turned out to be a worn bottom damper bolt.

[The Nun]

I had a knock that I thought was suspension, turned out it was the passenger door lock needed adjusting up tighter, so sound does travel around a vehicle body making you think the sound is coming from somewhere you don't think it is in the area you thought it was when it was knocking.

[edgedj]

Going to make some wheel centres, not sure on paint or maybe just cut from different layers of vinyl but maybe the SVG and raw PNGs are of use to others...

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[edgedj]

time for some less crucial tasks for the Nymph, speakers and some tunes. Cut and shut of the front door bins in progress to keep the design but shorten them and add a speaker. Nymph door bins are curved so the pair of 130mm GRP rings are being moulded flat on a piece of bullafo board MDF so they are nice and flat, next step smoothing them off and bonding on.

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[edgedj]

nearly there, just got to mount this onto the heater above the control, or suspend it from the dash (probably the latter). The amp is just a bluetooth streamer for my phone and takes a 12v 5a supply. Speakers are marine grade for obvious reasons.

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Despite the ridiculous name the volume control is a very high quality thing and it produces some pretty good music. Bass isn't fantastic but I think that's my speakers. I tried this amp driving my Wharfedale speakers in my lounge and yeah it's not a 1980s Pioneer amp good but it is better than Sonos. Plus Imps are small and what else can we put in them without taking up valuable space or ruining the simple looks

[The Nun]

I've got the Nob but not the sound , mines a rheostat blower control

[edgedj]

finally braved the cold yesterday and got around to changing the rear dampers to gax from spax, temperature is about 1 celsius here in Jersey so not the longest drive but after about 20 mins, I think the knocking noise is gone now so it seems it was the dampers causing the noise. I had to drill down the top nut to get the damper off, it was rusted to the shaft after only a couple of years. Something I've never known happen before occurred too on startup, not been run in 2 months, maybe 3 and the clutch had stuck to the flywheel, soon freed off after starting in gear but that was a new one on me.

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