What you discover when refitting suspension to an old race car

Update by Tim Suddard to the Elva Mk VI project car
Feb 13, 2025 | Elva, Restoration, Vintage Race Car, Elva Mk VI

Photography Credit: Tim Suddard

Our next task for our Elva Mk VI sports racer was to run brake lines. Before we could do that, however, we would need to hang the front suspension. Then we could determine the correct length.

We had rebuilt that front suspension a while back. It was now time to pull it from the shelf and put it in place.

Going in, we had a few questions. Would the mounting points line up? Would the rebuilt steering rack line up with our steering arms? Would this thing ever get around a race track or road in anything approximating a straight fashion? Now was the moment of truth.

Despite being divided into two front corners, mounting an assembled front end on a car is a cumbersome task, especially if you don’t have a helper.

We thought we had acquired all the correct hardware to make this job a bit easier. We had not. We had taken measurements off one corner, not realizing that it had been repaired to accommodate a 7/16-inch bolt. The rest of our front end mounting points used 3/8 hardware. We did some quick juggling and got the enough hardware from a local hardware store to at least see how everything would mate up.

Our goal at this point was to hang the front end securely enough to determine if our A-arms and coil-over mounts were indeed correct and then, of course, have the brake calipers in position so that we could make brake lines.

While we did achieve some success and everything will work, we will have to come back in and modify the frame a bit to have the same-size hardware at every corner.

Good thing we have not painted the frame yet! Again, nothing has been simple with this project.