An interesting thought provoking couple of posts sewin, most of which I agree with.
A few of your comments I'm unsure of though. Under acceleration the upper reaction bars (can we call them that
) don't do much, indeed the front suspension tends towards being unloaded unlike under heavy braking.
I would argue that the conical washers are best placed directly under the top oiler bolts to best take account of the adjustable camber angle that such cars allow and as such are tightened down. This also places the reaction bar closer and in more direct contact with the cross arm it's helping support. Speaking of the latter I note that those offered by Wolf Performance have the upper end of brace terminating in a shallow welded bush rather than the plain flattened tube of MMC items. The illustrated fitting instructions for these also concur with my thoughts. BTW I did hear that Cain had a pair of conical washers explode whilst tightening down, but put this down to lack of lubrication on assembly. As well as thoroughly greasing both halves I do assist these by orienting as far as possible with an initial set to take account of angular variation they are designed to take up.
Regarding front shocks the front end with its limited travel needs all the help it can get. For this reason I opted for the SSL RS kit and furthermore the Spax gas assisted adjustable shocks they normally include, selling the AVO adjustables I had fitted before. This after sorting out the rear with SSL dual rate coilovers to far better suit the factory 5 link rear on my Roadster which of course highlighted the front deficiencies, although I understand most folk sort out this end first.
Whilst the front shocks may well have little work to do, especially if the rebound spring is adjusted to zero pre-load static as with RS kit, there is a very noticeable sweet spot when setting them up by gradually increasing damping, when rebound travel suddenly comes under control and surprisingly to me offers a more comfortable ride over bumpy surfaces.
