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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Rear Suspension Low

I've got a 1977 midget. The distance from the floor to the wheel arch is 21.5" on the passengare side and 20" on the drivers side. Can I safely assume that the leaf spring has had it?
K Montgomery

Just an update. I've been on the archive site and found some information. It might not be the rear leaf springs but the opposing corner front suspension. If this is the case whats actually wrong with the opposing front suspension.
K Montgomery

could be a few things

measure all four wheels and post results

measure from centre of hub to underside of wheel arch

in a previous thread we were measuring from under the sills to ground (not bottom seam) front and rear and from the bottom of closed door to ground you could also post these measurements

obviously the car must be on level ground from all angles
Nigel Atkins

Many thanks for the reply. I've measured the distance from the centre of the hub to the underside of the arches.
Front N/S 35cm
Front O/S 33cm
Rear N/S 27cm
Rear O/S 25cm

The 2cm differential is the same when measured form the ground.

Hope that helps. Look forward to your advice.
Monty
K Montgomery

So it isn't a problem across the diagonal as is often the case.
Anyway, 2cms is nothing - pretty standard and within what is normal variation for these cars, would say.

Don't worry about it. You cannot see it when you are driving it!
Guy

I think it is a problem accross the diagonal. It's 2cm higher at the front N/S and 2cm lower and the rear O/S. I take your point that it's only 2 cm but thne reason I've queried it is because the inner rear arch fouls the rear O/S tyre when cornering.
K Montgomery

Sorry, quite right. I mis-read your results.
As I said it shouldn't really matter. If the rear springs are tired then the whole of the back of the car will be low.
If you want to level it up you may be able to achieve this by adding some spacer washers between the spring pan and lower wishbone on the high side at the front (NS). The design is such that it will lower by slightly more than 2 X the thickness of any spacers that you add. If this means that you need longer bolts, be sure to use high tensile ones.
Guy

Many thanks for that. However, I'm considering lowering the front end anyway by means of new springs and using a lowering kit for the rear from MGOC (Taking off the big black bumpers!) Is that likely to solve the problem?
K Montgomery

K,
I’m not sure that is, or only, a diagonal thing

but I don't know that for sure

from your figures the offside is 2 cm lower both front and rear

so the sides are level comparing front to rear but one side is 2 cm lower than the other, the driver's side

doing any work on the suspension will possibly find the cause of the problem

purely selfishly I will mention that I'm selling some uprated front lower springs that would reduce the standard '77 front ride height by about 1¼” and at 340lb rate (270lb is standard for your car and later chrome bumper models)

to see them
go to top right hand corner of this page
click on the top drop down menu (arrow)
click on ‘Classifieds’
scroll down page to ‘Parts for Sale’ and click on ‘United Kingdom’

the advert is fourth down with this link to a photo of them - http://i45.tinypic.com/20z8lcn.jpg

being unselfish I will say there is no need to lower the car or remove the rubber bumpers a lot of owners are more than happy with the standard set up of the car – getting the car set up properly is the important thing

and just lower the car or removing the bumper may not deal with this problem or make the car better overall
Nigel Atkins

Hi K

I was the chap Nigel was refering to when he mentioned the sill measurements. My problem was a different one, the back was sitting way to high. This was traced back to dodgy home made shackles. Once these were replaced the car was much better, although one side of the rear does sit about 8mm higher than the other I decided it was not worth worrying about. One thing that did worry me was that once it had been lowered one tyre did rub the inner arch when the suspension was compressed. At the time I had only recently got the car back on the road and was pottering carefully around on ancient tyres. Although all the tyres were at least the same size and correctly inflated, they were from different manufacturers. It turned out that the one that was rubbing was at least 10mm wider than the rest! I temporarily swapped that with a front one and no more rubbing. As a footnote I now have nice new matched rubber on all corners.

Mark
M Adams

Mark,
just for my interest - as old tyres on cars (let alone ancient ones) are a hobby-horse of mine would you say swapping from old tyres to new made a noticable difference to braking, road holding, handling, comfort and noise and you wish you'd done it sooner - or as expected or not enough to do it sooner next time?

and what tyre pressures are you running front and rear on your new tyres?

cheers, Nigel
Nigel Atkins

Hi Nigel

I also have a thing about old rubber being a very bad idea. I put new tyres on as soon as I practically could. I really was just doing very short slow drives before that to satisfy myself that nothing catostrophic was going to happen to the engine etc after such a long lay up. What I did not want to happen was to spend £200 plus on tyres before it first went on the road only to have major engine or similar failure first time out. This could have meant the car being layed up again for some time awaiting funds and new tyres sitting in the garage and ageing for no reason. Well that was my logic anyway. This is my only tyre based lapse. My moderns are changed as soon as they approach min tread. Regarding the Sprite, very much a high days and holiday car, the tyres will be changed every six years unless the wear dictates sooner.

As regards road holding, handling etc I can only give an honest comparison at low speeds, and that is yes even just pottering about they give a noticeable improvement. Now I have sorted out suspension and tyres I am pushing on a bit in terms of performance and so far I am happy with the way it goes and goes round corners.

I opted for Toyo tyres after various recomendations and at the moment run them on 23 psi front 25psi at the rear.

Mark
M Adams

This thread was discussed between 22/05/2012 and 24/05/2012

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

This thread is from the archive. The Live MG Midget and Sprite Technical BBS is active now.