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Ron Simons Racing.


Ron Simons Sells some lovely performance upgrade parts for the Alfa 75.  I personally regard his front anti-roll bars as being an almost obligatory upgrade for the 75.  Contrary to my own expectations, this stiffer front does not cause the front to wash out as you might expect, rather it cuts back on the front end roll and lets the tyres perform better.  So it actually increases front-end bite and grip.  In addition, by leaving the rear softer than the front it gives more traction to the DeDion and actually improves rear-end grip too.  It seems like an ad. but it is genuinely (IMO) a win-win piece of kit.  And it's rather reasonably priced too.
RSR Front Roll-bar

RSR Full suspension setup.

Ron also does a full suspension upgrade for the 75 featuring coil-overs at the front, stiffer shorter rear springs and way way way way way stiffer dampers all round.  Ron runs a racing school based in the legendary Nurbergring and uses Alfa 75s thus kitted out as his basic machine where they out-perform far more exotic machinery with ease.  However, I have bought and tried the full kit, and have my own fairly strong reservations.
Firstly, this is not a bolt-on kit.  The front suspension must first be lowered [which in turn involves popping out the torsion bars and rotating them - a pain] or else the new kit will actually raise your ride height, in my case by 25mm.  It's that stiff!

Now I must first confess that I did not lower my car at the front for a number of reasons.  Firstly, it wasn't really made clear whether this was needed or not.  Secondly I didn't want to be in a situation where, if the kit wasn't right, that I had even more work to do just reverting to my original setup.
So, with that caveat in mind you can take my opinion as is or ignore it completely!
I think this kit is too stiff for Irish roads.  In truth I think it's too stiff for most places other than Walt Disney on Ice!  If you've got speed-ramps on your daily commute (and who in Dublin ,at least, doesn't) then forget it.  My poor machine was bouncing on the upstroke and then bouncing again on the down stroke!  With the back upgraded too, things actually became quite close to comical!  Now as I said, I really like some of Ron's gear, and I've found Ron himself to be very helpful etc. but this kit just does not do it for me in an Irish context.

What I use.

In the end I took it all off again and reverted to my original set-up.  This is simply Ron's front roll-bar and poly bushings.  New wishbone bushes, top ones from Andy in Performatek.  These are slightly different to some of the others available out there in that they come with two poly spacers to pack the arm out.  Without these, apparently, some of the other bushings can work themselves out of the arm over time.
Poly UCA Bushing
I have poly bushings on the castor arm, although I will shortly be changing them to ball-joints, also from Andy.
Why Ball Joints In DeDion Caster Arms
At the back it's all poly bushings too on the watt's linkage and in the centre DeDion bushing.  The rubber DeDion bushing is a waste of time and money in my opinion, and gets out of shape way to easily.
For dampers I use these guys GAZ.  I like the adjustability and the response from the dampers seems just right for me.  Again, they do a kit specially for the 75.  And, let's face it, not everyone does!
Gaz & BiggRedGaz dampers are shown off here, but also note my beautifully rebuilt calipers courtesy of BiggRed.  These guys did a lovely job, and full reconditioned and powder coated my calipers so they look all nice and luverly through my wheels :-)
Once again it's nice that these guys actually cater specifically for the 75.



 
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