Fellow MGB wrenchers,
At the last meeting of the SD MG Club, I learned something new about MGB
front suspension. And you thought I knew everything! Fooled you! Anyway,
since I have a few spare seconds (I'm a fast typist) I thought I'd share
my new found wisdom with the net.
It turns out that about half of the MGB's put together had the upper kingpin
bushing in upside-down. If you have a stub axle assembly apart or you have
a new set of bushings, look at the top one. It has a curved slot on the
inside surface that doesn't extend all the way to one end. The end that
_does_ have the slot going all the way to the end is supposed to go up when
the assembly is installed in the car. With the bushing installed, if the
hole for grease is lined up with the hole for the zerk fitting, then grease
that's squirted into the bushing will travel up and out of the bushing and
into where the weight of the car rides on the top of the stub axle assembly.
The guy who shared this info said that sure enough, one side of his car had
the bushing right and the other side wrong and the front suspension had
never been apart before.
Another interesting fact is that the distance piece that's sold by Moss is
too short. The distance piece is that shiny metal tube about three inches
long that goes horizontally through the bottom of the kingpin and has that
long bolt going through it. The distance piece is supposed to get clamped
to the A-arms by the bolt that goes through it so that the whole assembly
(bolt, distance piece, and A-arm) rotates as a unit with the distance piece
turning inside the brass bushing. When the distance piece is shorter than
the width of the bottom of the kingpin, it's the bottom of the kingpin that
gets clamped to the A-arms making the A-arms grind against the kingpin
causing it to saw off the ends of the A-arms. If you have Moss distance
pieces, they're allegedly 0.020" shorter that the kingpin, so the trick is to
grind slightly more than 0.020" total off of both sides of the bottom of the
kingpin. Luckily, I have spare distance pieces because I absolutely refuse
to grind new parts.
If you knew all this before, forget I said anything.
Denise Thorpe
thorpe@kegs.saic.com
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