Ah well, I thought it was a bit too far out of true. From my ‘following the kit car scene at a distance’ over the last 30 odd years in the UK (it was the GP Spyder RSK that first ignited my passion for replicas), this kind of Heath Robinson, laissez faire attitude to doing things the right way seemed, to me at least, to hold back the industry for years. Not that it was necessarily deliberate, but that at the time no-one showed them the right way. A bit like the danger and lack of track/ car safety in Grand Prix in the 60s and70s was simply “part of the risk of competing”. And this was a ‘98 ‘factory built’ Chesil! I’m sure they thought as long as the body looked pretty everything else could be ‘good enough’. Or in this case, “the steering rag is rubber so it can flex a bit, that’s what it’s designed to do”..
I guess I’ll add relocating the steering box to the long to-do list. Seeing as I’m changing the tire diameter (increasing the tire height), I’ll need to adjust the ride height, and this will be a good time to sort the (leaking) steering box and reposition it on the beam before I get the tracking sorted!
Thanks one and all for your help as always.