Damper delight
Invoking the spirit of early motoring pioneers Daimler and Maybach, this month we took a brave turn into the unknown. The cause? Leaking dampers. Since buying the car we’ve known that at least one was on the way out, but in truth all needed replacing. Annoyingly, the original Decarbon units are single-use items. Enter R5T fanatic Olly Melliard. In his day job he works for Simon Hadfield Motorsport, but he also has a cheeky sideline producing homologated braking kits and suspension components for the Gallic tarmac terrier (tub2@hotmail.co.uk if you’re interested).
We decided to let him loose on the dampers. He stripped them and found two obstacles – there’s no available tooling for re- gassing the units, and also any seal kits are by now long obsolete. The latter was relatively simple to draw up and reproduce.
He then adapted a Koni gassing system and fitted valves to allow future re- charging. But when the dampers were gas pressurised there were multiple leaks. It turns out that the Decarbon bodies have an inner sleeve – a tube within a tube – and pressurised air was leaking out through the cavity.
So it was back to the blimmin’ start – or the middle, at least. The solution was to make new, longer gas inserts that went further in and use a bonding resin to seal against the inner cavity. With the use of modern oils and blueprinting, as well as that all-important ‘can do’ attitude we now have better than new Decarbon dampers.
Our R5T remains blessedly original, and most importantly Olly can now restore others so you can keep your Turbo OE. We pioneers accept all forms of liquid reward.