I just tracked down this poor quality video taken by a customer when I visited his holiday cottage recently.
Duncan's intention was to demonstrate that anyone could drive up there in any vehicle....they couldn't!!!

[ame]https://youtu.be/dS55-RjPuPI[/ame]

He shouldn't worry, most households around here, now have one of these on the driveway to cope with the arduous school run.....

poor Murphio!

He is so light he just floats over those bumps, and the road is so wide he can go around the pot holes - no problem

Franko500 said:

poor Murphio!

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Murf thanks you for your concern. But it was all in a day's work. Since the beginning of that weekend before last we've now driven over a thousand miles on slightly smoother roads without any problems.
The dream is to find the time in some way to emulate Lang and Bev Kidby from Australia who did a huge trip "round the world" at one point having done 11,000 miles in three weeks to include the roads of Siberia, which go on for ever.

Siberian Road by Peter Thompson, on Flickr

how do you find the 500 suspension coping with such terrain? im a little concerned over the front bushes as they are only small. Have you had to replace any yet?

Franko500 said:

how do you find the 500 suspension coping with such terrain? im a little concerned over the front bushes as they are only small. Have you had to replace any yet?

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I can understand what you mean as the arms are quite fragile and the bushes hardly seem located in them, but despite me "abusing" him, I haven't replaced any of the running-gear since rebuilding the car.
I think it's possibly because, as just said previously, the car is so light. This does tally with how it felt on that "road" because there were no clunks or jolts or squeaks as might be expected.
It's hard to say without putting a camera under the wing, but I suspect that the upper arms don't move over a great arc, even in those conditions. The spring is under a lot of tension where is supports the steering-knuckle assembly and surely it can't actually move all that much.
The bodyshell is very rigid and I also think that helps, as the whole vehicle is acting like a mult-directional anti-roll bar which moderates damaging rebounds as it goes over more serious undulations....just my theories.