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Re: Tubular cross members

To: mgb-v8@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Tubular cross members
From: "James J." <m1garand@speakeasy.net>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 21:43:47 -0500
Cc: Larry Embrey <larry@embreyfamily.com>
References: <NHBBIGONALJFKFIPBGNJKEIFCBAA.larry@embreyfamily.com>
Reply-to: "James J." <m1garand@speakeasy.net>
Sender: owner-mgb-v8@autox.team.net
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.2) Gecko/20021120 Netscape/7.01
Larry, et al...
    One side note, The BMH group does still manufacture and sell the MG 
RV8 crossmember in the US through Moss and The Roadster Factory (about 
$3000.00, I think).  At least two commercial ventures in the US and a 
few in Europe make tubular A-arm coil-over conversions for the stock 
stamped-steel x-member, and they run about $1200.00.  Mustang II tubular 
x-members (rectangular tubing) with a full tubular coil-over suspension 
favored by street rodders run in the $2000 to $4000 range.  Several 
places in the US make them.  They also replace the annoying king-pin 
with ball joints, which can be used to add anti-dive, and allow the 
upper and lower a-arms to be non-parallel (when viewed from the side of 
the car).  One option would be to look at a way of mounting the 
already-existing Mustang II kits to the MGB front sub-frame and avoid 
some of the effort of having to re-invent the wheel (or a part very 
close to the wheel, so to speak).  By focussing on just the mounting 
aspects, some of the development effort could be eliminated.
    One last thought, (and this is just me, and not meant to discourage 
anyone) I wouldn't bother developing a front-end if it didn't address 
the B's geometry shortfalls.  If the idea is to just drag-race the B, 
there have to be more simple ways of reducing front-end weight, and some 
anti-squat on the rear-end could help with the weight-transfer at launch.

Kudos to you for suggesting improvements to the MGB suspension, in 
whatever form they finally take, since that is it's weakest link (argh, 
another bad pun...) and I encourage anyone with like ideas to share 
them.  I just bought a stripped-down post'74 x-member, which will become 
my lab-rat for some suspension experimentation.  I'm going to play with 
mustang II and early camero parts, since they are cheap and readily 
available to all.
Cheers,
James J.

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