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MG MGA - front suspension rubber

Hello all,

I rebuilt the suspension for my 1960 1600 about 2 years ago. It is still in the chassis stage with no engine or body installed. This morning I noticed the rubber seals or dust covers (16)on the king pin trunnions were completely cracked and disintegrated. Is this just the way it goes, or were there some defective parts out there? I am sure they were part of a Moss complete front end rebuild kit.

Safety fast!

JMG
John Greenlee

The quality of rubber parts is a crap shoot. It took several years to complete our A and the rubber seals on the swivel axel to bottom trunnion both needed replacing before the car ever hit the road.
John H

See here: http://mgaguru.com/mgtech/faulty/ft018.htm
Barney Gaylord

I just noticed the same on my cars. VERY ANNOYING! I should have kept the originals, they were hard but at least they were still in one piece, or maybe DUCT TAPE. I used the garbage replacements on one of my cars only a year ago!

Same goes with other rubber products from questionable suppliers. Float Bowl to Carb rubbers - on one car I re-used the 44 year old originals and they don't leak, ever. On the other car I replaced with new and have to do so every year when the car comes out of hiding. They look much like the suspension bits squishy and cracked. How about the windscreen seal- cracked after a year.

C'mon... It's rubber. How hard can it be to get the formula right? Oh, wait a minute do we need to write it out top to bottom or right to left?

Which makes me wonder... with the new TF being introduced in the next year or two, I wonder what it's life span will be before it's squishy and cracked. I think it's fantastic that some will be built in the good old USA, (I feel a rant coming on) but with the same inferior parts? Same inferior parts? Well we all know that just because they want the cars built here doesn't mean they they'll be built with parts sourced from the US too cuz they are too expensive, just like the steel which we now have to buy from Japan. Looks like steel, smells like steel, rusts like steel, squishy and cracked? No, but it welds like garbage.

The TF will be good for jobs though. After all the US is a country of consumers and service providers. Insert foreign product into the mix and you've got the perfect model. Of course the technology and engineering that is going to be required to pull this thing off will be outsourced to other countries just as my job was when the bubble burst (bitter- possibly why I'm ranting), but hey let's face it, in the end all the US really needs is yet another mass produced disposable piece of tin that will make someone happy until they are mowed down by a soccer mom in her Ford Excretion er, Excursion while she's yelling at her deadbeat ex husband about his late child support payments.

BTW, I saw the latest photo's of the TF while reading Autoweek over a Big Mac with BIGGIE everything and decided it's pretty cool. Maybe my big squishy cracked ass will look good in this squishy cracked little car. Not much left in the 401k now anyway, I could use it to get a new TF, maybe the Excursion way out doesn't sound too bad. (I kid... I kid!)

Back to the point...
What does Moss have to say about this product issue?

John
JohnB

I had the same problem and mine was finished in 1996, so the problem goes back aways
gary starr

Damn. I was about to orser some trunnion seal. Has anyone bought some that have lasted reasonably well?


TTFN

Derek Nicholson

I just replaced mine. They were brand new from moss 2 yrs ago. They were never used. I got the new ones from clarke spares.
Fred H

Moss rubbers are definitely not fit for purpose. Mine split around the circumference in six months and I hadn't even used the car! Where they had split the rubber thickness was paper thin. When I took them back to Moss I put them on the counter and although no words were exchanged the guy serving went away and brought back new replacements! It seems that the percentage failure rate of this item is exceptionally high.

However, I'm not sure I would rush into blaming the manufacturer for this poor quality: I think the blame should rest with Moss. Moss should first supply the manufacturer with a fully toleranced drawing, with the material accurately specified. The maker should then turn out a small run for Moss to assess and if this assessment proves satisfactory Moss would then give the go ahead for a production run. On receipt of the first run Moss should carry out a quality control procedure against the original specification. If more than a given percentage of items in a sample fails to meet the spec. the whole run would be returned to the maker.

Maybe the maker is making bad parts but it is Moss' fault for either not specifying properly or not doing the quality control.

You can bet your life that once a production run has been accepted Moss is not going to bin the parts when it finds out from customers that they are unfit for use. It will off load them to the unsuspecting customer in the knowledge that only a small percentage of guys will return them.

But don't knock a supplier just because they are in the far east. Japan is in that area and their reputation for high quality is legendary. I reckon we should be knocking Moss' quality control department assuming, of course, that they have one! By the way is Moss a US company? Mike
m.j. moore

Scarborough Faire seems to have good quality rubber parts.
Cheers,
GTF
G T Foster

Sorry I wanted to type 1986, and now I'm glad I did not go thru the work of changing them if they haven't fixed the problem.
gary starr

I had a long discussion with Cecilia from Scarborough Faire a few years back (2003). She assured me her dust seals were the best. She mentioned some other retailers do not have the correct mix of rubber and whatever else goes into making them just right.
I sure hope they are the best.
These dust seals are time consuming to replace, expensive if neglected and then the front end needs an alignment after it is all said and done.

Ray
Ray Ammeter

I have had this problem on three cars as well. All fitted with the poor Moss rubber seals. I have to agree with John B...these are rubber seals... I mean we have modern cars with good seals ..why not decent rubber seals and steering boots. Moss now sells "Premium Quality" boots..."for when good just isnt good enough" they say... that is a load of BS....

It pretty bad when they continue to seel a very poor part and then charge more for the correct one.

Why not withdraw the bad part and drop the Bull about premium quality - more like proper quality in my book.

Glad to hear other have better seals.

Jeff
J Delk

This thread was discussed between 09/08/2006 and 12/08/2006

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