Jeff:
The arm with more arch is closest to the front of the car, as
you want
there to be some "rake" to the vertical link. You want the top of the
vertical
link inclined slightly to the rear of the car.
You also need to worry about the lower a-arms. They can be
installed
upside down which will lower the car 1/2-3/4". The arch on the lower
a-arms
goes up.
The upper fulcrum pin can also be installed backwards, so check
that as
well. For the TR6, you want the fulcrum pin installed so that the arch
is
toward the shock. It looks like the pin will not clear the shock mount,
but it does.
I think that I managed to get each of these wrong at least once
while I
was rebuilding my front suspension.
As a side note, I feel this is symptomatic of why the English
went out
of business as car makers. Cars need to be engineered with minimum parts
count,
and the parts designed so that they can only be assembled the correct
way. The
front suspension on these cars has so many little parts, seemingly all
of which
can be installed upside down or backwards.
I love the character of my car, and I enjoy fiddling with it,
but from a
business perspective, the seeds of destruction were there from the
beginning.
Unfortunately, by the time BL woke up, there was too little capital
available
to redesign and too little time to overcome the negative quality
perceptions.
It is doubly sad, because there were so many good ideas in the cars. PI,
aluminum IRS, rack and pinion steering, and TR was the first company to
mass
produce front disk brakes. So they had lots of good ideas.
Cheers,
Vance
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-6pack@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-6pack@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of jeff m
Sent: November 03, 2005 3:44 PM
To: 6pack
Subject: i may have scrwed up (front suspension)
Hello,
I'm finally getting around to rebuilding front
suspension, drivers side. I rebuilt the passenger side
the beginning of the year. I didn't relize the upper
control arms were different. Now i'm concerned i have
the control arms wrong on the passenger side. I have
POR 15 fairly heavy on the arms and i can't see the
"R" stamped on it. Does the control arm with more of
an arch on it go on the left side of the upper fulcrum
if you are looking into the wheelwell? The ball joint
is a little forward of the shock now, i'm thinking it
should be line sup even with the shock tower...
TIA,
Jeff
'75 TR6
|