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MG MGA - Rear Suspension Knock

A saga that others may be interested in.

For a while I had a worsening annoying knock coming from right hand rear suspension so very much in the drivers ear. I had had a problem with the front bush in the spring hence this was the first suspect. My original problem was that the bush had clearly been moving within chassis fixing as it had worn short. As a result of this issue I investigated this again and what I found out was that the replacement bushes were significantly dimensionally wrong. The bolt hole was too large, the outside diameter was slightly too small and the overall length was also under size. Over a number of stages I made a sleeve for the bolt to compensate for the hole being too large, I made a shim to compensate for overall length being short and I stopped the bush moving in the spring but despite much effort the very irritating knocking sound persisted on speed bumps and bumpy surfaces.

I then decided the knock had to be coming from another source and the only real option was the shocker or its linkage so I disconnected the bottom of the drop arm and the knock disappeared so it had to be the drop arm or the shocker. As drop arms are only £13 from Moss I replaced it and everything was fine so I am happy after much effort but despite the fact the drop arm was obviously the culprit there was no apparent slack in either end of the arm I took of.

Interestingly I have always thought the rear shocker on MGAs do sod all. As part of my test for this issue I did drive the car with one shocker disconnected and it made no perceivable difference to handling. Of course leaf spring are self dampening to some extent.

Paul
Paul Dean

Hi Paul
I have exactly the same problem with (what I assume is the rear shock absorber). I'm going to try your trick of disconnecting the bottom end of the shock to see what happens.
Thanks for the tip, I'll let you know how I get on.
Eddy
E Maher

Eddy a bit of extra info. When I disconnected the bottom of the drop arm I had to hacksaw through the nut. I didn’t know whether it was the arm or the shocker but at only £13 for an arm I thought that I would change that first. My shocker seems fine despite being original having done well over a 100k miles. Personally I don’t think they have very much work to do as the still leaf springs are self dampening.

Good luck.

Paul
Paul Dean

Hi Paul
for well over 10 years I ran my MGA with a Spax telescopic rear shock absorber conversion kit.

I had assumed that these were better than the original lever arm shocks and so I put up with the rock hard ride.
The Spax shocks were adjustable and I had to run them with the adjustment backed right off to get the ride to be anything like acceptable.

Then, I decided that I was fed up with the jarring ride and the terrible ground clearance of the lowered race-suspension set up that I had and I converted the whole car back to original factory settings including lever-arm shocks front and rear.

The car was transformed, the rear suspension felt like a magic carpet in comparison to before and the handling and cornering were brilliant.

Rear lever-arm shock absorbers really work well on the MGA and I wish I had done this years ago.

Cheers
Colyn
Colyn Firth

This thread was discussed between 13/08/2024 and 20/08/2024

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This thread is from the archive. The Live MG MGA BBS is active now.