Thanks for all those thoughts. I was thinking of a smear of copper slip, can't do any harm.
My car failed the MOT (first since 2016 !) on a broken front AVO damper spring and a seized rear brake slave cylinder. Removing the damper concerned me a bit but unnecessarily so, for after removing the shiny bottom bolt, and with just a series of taps, the top shiny stud just slid back into the footwell to halfway, allowing the damper to drop down. I bet it's not so easy on a real 50 year old car.
I was having problems sourcing a suitable spring compressor, but after a while , it dawned on me that I could just cut through the middle coil which gave me the required clearance, such that I could dismantle the unit to get the Part No.( A7.5 -250 )
7.5" long and 250 lbs. Spring rate - 2" bore, although Faulkner said they are 1.9"
It now transpires that AVO are now owned by Turbo Technics in Northampton, quite near to me, but all of these springs (and quite a few others I suspect ) are made by D. Faulkner Springs, but are special order only via TT then Europa Engineering, who had a batch of 20 on order but couldn't let me have a pair, as they were going out as spring/damper units. I tried sweet-talking Richard at Europa and he said he would try and sort a pair out for me.
My car is a '74 TCS. Totally rebuilt (Receipt from last but one owner for £45k!!!! Yes really, £28k labour, £45k total. More than the car was worth, obviously. AND the previous owner to him had had the body off, painted, retrimmed, rewired, new brightwork, screen, rubbers and loads of additional stuff.
I'll work out how much has been spent in this car so far (bills going back to when it was born) but I bet it's getting close to £75k in running costs and general upkeep, Unbelievable.