[Kevin H]

I thought some V8 owners might be interested in what's in those turrets on the front cross-member that the top of the suspension spring goes into. The components shown below deteriorate after a few years. The plastic and rubber parts simply disintegrate over time and the mild steel circular plate comes untreated from Bristol so you can probably imagine what happens to that.

When these parts are no longer present the front of the car will sit 1-2 inches lower and the stresses change for the worse where the front spring sits in the cross-member.

On my own 411 someone had simply 'solved' the problem by installing longer springs, which I discovered only when I added the missing parts and had a hellish job getting the springs back in. When we finally did it the front end sat too high. Needless to say I ended up getting new springs as well.