1973 MGB GT- A little rust 30/08

[rust4life]

Looking good mate!
If the front suspension is anything like my Sprite it will have a cotter pin holding the lower kingpin bolt in - it's like a tiny little grub screw that screws through the kingpin casing and into a groove in the bolt about half way along to stop it sliding out.
I'm getting shudders remembering having to drill mine out whilst rebuilding the Sprite's front suspension because they were seized in solid and they have a very small head on them (easy to miss, esp when covered in gunk - there's just a little bump in the bottom of the kingpin casting) so go easy and use loads of penetrating fluid!

[adam73bgt]

May 12, 2014 21:34:34 GMT rust4life said:

Looking good mate!
If the front suspension is anything like my Sprite it will have a cotter pin holding the lower kingpin bolt in - it's like a tiny little grub screw that screws through the kingpin casing and into a groove in the bolt about half way along to stop it sliding out.
I'm getting shudders remembering having to drill mine out whilst rebuilding the Sprite's front suspension because they were seized in solid and they have a very small head on them (easy to miss, esp when covered in gunk - there's just a little bump in the bottom of the kingpin casting) so go easy and use loads of penetrating fluid!

Cheers I've double checked my haynes diagram and there doesn't seem to be any cotter pin, there is a grub screw but I'm not sure if thats for the bolt or not, I'll have a look under the layers of crud tomorrow. Although if I'm just removing the bolt it may not be an issue? I've got a new bolt to go in so I'll check if its got a groove

[niwid]

Great work. I look forward to watching you work through the front suspension as it's something I will be doing at some point, with the same mods planned! I can't wait to see this car in the flesh at RRG this year

[Nathan]

Excellent progress mate.
It's been a while since I've done mine, but I don't remember any Grub screws.
Looking on the MGOC Spares it does not show any, that being said I remember a small cut-out in the bolt.

[adam73bgt]

Cheers guys

I cracked on with day two of suspension work today and its been a mixed bag of good and bad..

I thought I'd start off by doing the top bushes since thats where I stopped yesterday, a quick comparison of the old and new bushes



Thanks to the bushes being tapered, they went in quite easily and with the help of a G clamp, the crush tube was pressed into place as well



Then it took a bit of fiddling to get it back in place between the lever shock arms, after a short while I realised that loosening off the arm clamping bolt might help



I then had to drive a chisel in the gap between the arms to get as much space for the bush as possible but got there in the end



The bottom bolt still didn't seem to want to budge so I thought I'd get on with changing the top bush on the other side of the car instead, this went smoothly since I'd already done it once on the other side. But while I was under there, I noticed that the dampers are different on each side, the passenger side seems to have some sort of rubber bush between the arms and the housing



But the drivers side has gaps



Odd, but they've been like that since I've had the car. After I've been in my new job for a bit I'll probably look to get them refurbished or get a refurbed pair

A quick pic of the passenger side with the bush done



So now I have to make the decision over whether I either keep trying to get the bolt out to get the wishbones swapped over or put it back as it is so I can drive back to Cov on sunday and change the wishbones later on..

There seems to be a break in the rain just now so may get back out there with the hammer

Oh also the spring pans have been given a lick of paint just to keep them looking decent until I probably get new ones at some point. Speaking of new bits, I've also found that the front springs are about an 8.75 inch free height so a pair of 8 inch springs should get me a bit more of a drop

Also while in the wheel well I found why one of my sidelights hasn't been working....



More to come later or tomorrow

[adam73bgt]

Day 3 of the front suspension work began with me worrying that I wouldn't be able to get the bottom kingpin bolts out so I'd have to drive back to Coventry on the old wishbones and bushes.

To tackle this issue I decided to skirt round it by having a go at the passenger side instead to see if I had any more luck there. Well I tried spinning the bolt with the ratchet and it actually moved a bit which I took as a good sign, so armed with lots of penetrant spray, a bigger hammer and some brute force I was able to do this



SUCCESS!! got the curse word out, a quick look at the lower arms showed that there was a bit of tension in the system which may not have been helping things, so the use of a trolley jack was later employed



You may also notice that I've put the spring pan back in, I did this temporarily to brace up the lower wishbone arms as I was concerned that they were just absorbing my hammer hits by flexing rather than the bolt moving, so replace the spring pan on the drivers side and liberally apply penetrant (I had run out of shock and unlock by this point so I was using some 3 in 1 pentrant spray which I don't really rate) and I managed to get the bolt to move a bit



Kept hammering at it (the neighbours must it when I'm around..) and using the bolt from the other side as a drift, it eventually came out



So now I could think about the actual wishbone arms themselves, regular readers (lol) will recognise these from some time ago but to recap. We've got negative camber wishbone arms, new drop links, new lower kingpin bolts along with dust seals and thrust washers (don't have time to fit the supplied metal bush) and a pair of proper bolts for the anti roll bar to drop link



Heres a quick comparison of old to new, the new wishbones are a little longer to give some negative camber to improve turn in and front grip



You can roughly see the length difference



So then I got on with removing the old wishbones, one miraculously slid right off , another came off with a bit of hacksawing at the bush and the last two came off but left the bush on the pivot



You can see the remains of two of the bushes in the pile there haha

Taking the wishbones off also showed the condition of the lower kingpin bolt assemblies, this shows the typical condition of the dust seals..



And thats where the progress ends for today, been attacking the stuck bush crush tubes but they don't want to budge, will get some shock and unlock tomorrow to try to freeze the pivot a bit smaller to help the tubes come off or I'll have to use some heat to expand the tubes.

Heres how the passenger side is looking



Nicely stuck on there



And the drivers side



same story



Needless to say, copper grease will be used on rebuilding to avoid things getting stuck in the future

Another thing I've been doing is manually wire brushing and painting the spring pans to get a little bit more life out of them, they'll likely get replaced in the not too distant future as they're fairly cheap, unfortunately the only paint lying about was some green hammerite



An interesting look haha

More to follow tomorrow, I'm sure this is the most frequent updating I've ever done

[93fxdl]

Couple of suggestions, if the dinky claw hammer is all you have, try getting a decent sized ball pein hammer or failing that, possibly a lump hammer, so you can hit things not just tickle them. If you have a welder, run a bead down the length of the tubes, the heat will free them and the bead will give something for grips to twist with, or run a grinder along the tubes until you're almost down to the bolt then twist with grips, the heat and vibration will help free them. If your really confident you could take them right down till they split. If no power available a good hand file will soon take them off, unless they are hardened.
Best of luck for tomorrow
Ttfn Glenn

[task]

Looking good, that's going to handle differently now with the new bushes and ARB up front

The above are all good suggestions on removing the crush tube, the only other one I can add is heating it up well with a blow torch and then chucking some water over it.

Best of luck

[adam73bgt]

Cheers for the comments guys, I don't have many power tools so tend to rely on the hand tools There wasn't a huge amount of room to swing a hammer so anything bigger may have been an issue.

The good news is that after a while, I managed to get one of the crush tubes off and the other will come off soon but I need to buy some new hacksaw blades as I ran out.

So what I did was carefully cut along the length of the crush tube like so



Then I used a chisel and hammer to help peel the crush tube off the pivot. The remainder of the crush tube did then get released and I could get it off with some molegrips. There is a little scoring to the pivot but it'll be fine for now



Took a long time to do little today which was annoying so once I get the new blades tomorrow I should be able to get the wishbones and get this job done

[Curtis]

You best hurry up if you want to start work on Monday

[adam73bgt]

May 16, 2014 9:48:35 GMT Curtis said:

You best hurry up if you want to start work on Monday

Well all being well I shall be there as the car is in one piece and back in Coventry

So I missed off the last couple of days updates as I wasn't getting very far haha but heres a quick summary of how things went, so this is how it looked a couple of days ago

First off I had to get the second crush tube off with a chisel, hacksaw and molegrips



Which lead to this



Had the wishbones in place on both sides and I thought it would just be a simple task of whack the springs and pans in, hook up the anti roll bar and job done.



It wasn't quite so easy

First off the spring pans didn't seem to sit flat which perplexed me for a while until I realised that the front lower wishbone arms are handed, swapped them over and the springs and pans went in easily.

Then I had fun trying to get the anti roll bar back on, the bolts at the drop links wouldn't line up so I resorted to dropping the whole bar from where it mounted to the chassis, got the drop link bolts in then reattached the bar which worked

The result being two sides of the front suspension all back together





Can't really see the camber here but its a fresh off the stands shot and a pretty curse word one at that



The car is sitting lower in the middle now too which made getting the jack out a bit interesting...

I finally got the front end all back together as it was getting dark



The drive back to Coventry highlighted the changes in the steering, the car is much more responsive at the front end and doesn't seem to react as much to bumps. Though some bumps do make the suspension react more, particularly on the passenger side.. The toe does need a bit of adjustment as its recommended to add a bit of toe in after fitting the arms, so will look to get that done soonish

[niwid]

Sweeeet! Yeah, get the alignment done ASAP. I imagine working down there and changing so many things will have put it out slightly anyway, and you'd be surprised how much difference even slight adjustments make. Good work though, you don't seem to have got too stressed with it at all, which is something I always struggle with when tackling such things. Those crush tubes would have ruined my mood for a week!

Btw, what springs did you go for?

[adam73bgt]

May 19, 2014 10:08:01 GMT niwid said:

Sweeeet! Yeah, get the alignment done ASAP. I imagine working down there and changing so many things will have put it out slightly anyway, and you'd be surprised how much difference even slight adjustments make. Good work though, you don't seem to have got too stressed with it at all, which is something I always struggle with when tackling such things. Those crush tubes would have ruined my mood for a week!

Btw, what springs did you go for?

Aye, I've seen a few mates wreck their front tyres with poor toe adjustment so I don't really want to be joining the club haha

Ha cheers! I don't tend to get too stressed usually though the stuck crush tubes did test my patience, but by that point I was well past the point of no return so had to get it sorted if I wanted to get to my first day at work

I left the springs with the ones I had before which are a 'lowered' B spring which I got from the B Hive on ebay, I believe they're 550lb and the free height looked to be around 8.75 inches though most lowered springs seem to have a free height of 8 inches..


On a ride height note. One of the driving 'differences' I had noticed was that the front left of the car seemed to react to bumps worse than the front right side. Well I think I found the culprit....



Theres probably about an inch gap between the bump stop and spring pan Not an issue on the drivers side as the bump stop is missing. Clearly I hadn't realised how much the camber arms would lower the front of the car.

I shall chop off the bump stop for the time being, you can get shortened bump stops but it would be a right pain to swap it over.

Also a couple pics of the camber taken as I got to work this morning





It's making me re think whether I want to go sebring arch or not now plus theres room to space the front wheels out a bit more/ get wider wheels....

[adam73bgt]

Thought I'd grab some better pictures of the new 'lows'















Looks decent parked up but still need to get that geometry sorted though

[flyingphil]

Looking very good with that "Stance" Adam!

[sonus]

That looks really good

[Seth]

I continue to enjoy reading your trials, tribulations and developments of this car. It's looking really good

Can you get in there with a hacksaw blade to take some of the rubber off the bumpstop? I don't think its ever a good idea to run without anything at all.

[ChasR]

The shorter bumpstops are available quite cheaply. I had a set fitted to my 'B:




The existing ones are not too hard to remove if you know how . Due to the spacer blocks being alloy and the nuts being made of steel electrolytic corrosion occurs. Knowing what I know now I would just take an angle grinder to the spacer blocks and the bolt heads with a good cutting disc (I ended up doing this to both of my old bump stops). IIRC I ordered my shortened ones from David Manners (so Moss will also sell them, but possibly for a little more). Like Seth I would run with a set of correct bumpstops in place .

www.moss-europe.co.uk/Shop/ViewProducts.aspx?PlateIndexID=13364

[adam73bgt]

May 21, 2014 8:22:15 GMT Seth said:

I continue to enjoy reading your trials, tribulations and developments of this car. It's looking really good

Can you get in there with a hacksaw blade to take some of the rubber off the bumpstop? I don't think its ever a good idea to run without anything at all.

May 21, 2014 11:46:48 GMT ChasR said:

The shorter bumpstops are available quite cheaply. I had a set fitted to my 'B:

The existing ones are not too hard to remove if you know how . Due to the spacer blocks being alloy and the nuts being made of steel electrolytic corrosion occurs. Knowing what I know now I would just take an angle grinder to the spacer blocks and the bolt heads with a good cutting disc (I ended up doing this to both of my old bump stops). IIRC I ordered my shortened ones from David Manners (so Moss will also sell them, but possibly for a little more). Like Seth I would run with a set of correct bumpstops in place .

www.moss-europe.co.uk/Shop/ViewProducts.aspx?PlateIndexID=13364

I do agree, its not ideal to be running without bumpstops at all, hopefully I'll be able to get a second car in the near future so I can take the couple of days its gonna be to cut/smash the old bumpstops off to fit some shortened ones on

That said it has been driving (relatively) fine for the time being, but its certainly near the top of my list of priorities


Also thanks for the comments as always everyone

[adam73bgt]

Went to a local meet the other day and got a shot as I was driving in, I then got a mate to shop on some sebring arches and wider wheels to reignite the sebring or not debate in my head