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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Twitchy rear end

Chaps

Rear end on the modified midget seems a little skippy/lively of late when zooming through the bends. It's as if the rear end just wants to let go - in the horizontal plane. It never was like that. Always very firmly planted. Any clues as to what I should be looking for would be much appreciated.

Oggers

Suspension set up,
rear spring U-bolts loose,
dampers or fixings loose or worn,
tyres inflation and/or wear

- singularly or any combination or permutation.
Nigel Atkins

What sort of dampers?

Do you have a panhard rod, or similar?
Dave O'Neill 2

No rod - Appreciate the need to check the obvious, but wondering if there is anything specific which would make the car wander so.
Oggers

What have you changed? I fitted a new pair of tyres on the rear once and it felt like it was oversteering when turning in one direction, I took it up with Avon as an Avon tyre and the technician asked me to swap the tyres side to side and see what happened, it swapped the feeling of oversteer to the other direction so I reported that back and he gave me a credit note for a new tyre which when fitted sorted the issue. He seemed to know the problem but wouldn't tell me, must have been some construction or compound issue I guess.
David Billington

"IF" everything is the same and it's just gone like it , if it's got tele rear shocks , one might be jammed up or bent, tyres might have gone off or the usual cause is the front swaybar has broken out of the chassis-------------
I had a similar issue once that took a while to find and ended up being a broken valve in a rear shocker, it would compress ok just pushing down on the car but one side would return back up and the other would only return very slowly resulting in the suspension on that side getting gradually sucked down further and further with each little bump it hit, I'd get back to the pits and the car would be sitting crooked but after about a min. it would be sat back flat--it skipped all over the place hillclimbing with the bumps being a little larger than a circuit
William Revit

Willy,

ARB tear out sounds like a good candidate for a sudden change., Your damper problem sounds similar to what was explained to me by a guy with adjustable telescopics on the rear and they had been set too firm and both sides pumped down during a run and relaxed once parked up.
David Billington

Chaps

Thank you for the replies. I had thought of ARB and associated bushes, but steering hard into corners the front end seems fine. However I do appreciate it can affect the rear. Yes it has teles at the rear - will check them out. Looks level from the rear though. Cannot believe its tyres. They are all good - though one sidewall does rub now and then. Squared off rear wheel arches do not help.

Need it to handle as I am thinking of installing bike carbs onto the 2.0 Duratec up front.

Oggers

Another basic one that I suffered from once upon a time is that the front spring eye bolt had come loose, allowing the front of the spring to move about a bit and inducing some terrifying rear wheel steering effects!

Malc.
Malcolm Le Chevalier

I've had to swap tyres side before as David had with Avon but my tyres were part worn by then so I'd suggest as it cheap, quick and easy to do swap the front wheels with the rear to see if there's any difference.

Just ordered some Avon's yesterday for my wife's car, I've never used them before but my mate always chose them when he could have had any others.

Nigel Atkins

This thread was discussed between 28/06/2020 and 29/06/2020

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

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