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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Steering woes!!

Well !t should have been a rolling Chassis !!
i have fitted Peter May lever arms and top trunion
but the steering geometry is all wrong now and there
does not seem to be enough thread on the track rod end
to adjust. steering arms have BTA 6499 MF C.1
M0WOG stamped on them any ideas . pete
P C Knightley

Pete,

An initial thought is that it is quite common to reassemble the top trunnion 180 degrees out from the correct orientation. IIRC the top trunnion eye should be outside the kingpin but is often assembled the other way giving excessive positive camber. Post image if possible of the problem.
David Billington

Because of the big difference in camber the track rod ends have to be wound right in. I think I had to grind a couple of mm off the face of the track rod end to give the extra adjustment. You will see what I mean, the face that mates up to the lock nut. Other options are to make the lock nut thinner (then hardly any thread left) or cut extra threads on the track rod (difficult!).

John Payne

hi David and John, not having much luck with picture
if some one has a mobile number
I have a couple on the phone. The top trunion
is the peter May one , the lever arm is 190mm long.
what i don't understand the track rod end is
level with king pins with the wheel in the central
position . At present I can see the wood for the trees. regards Pete
P C Knightley

Pete, pic will probably need resizing to get it to load up on here.

The PM lever arm will be exactly the same as any other length wise so that can't be the problem. Only thing I can think is that like David says you can assemble the trunion the wrong way round.

Another thing to note is that it is sometimes impossible to connect the ball joint of the TRE to the steering arm without jacking up the wishbone a little. Same can be said about the trunion pivot bolt.

Not really sure what else to suggest as I'm not really sure what the problem actually is!!
John Payne

Hi
Not sure if helps but I have exactly the same set up and used stock track rod ends with no mods .

Some pics on www.sprinzelsebringsprite.co.uk that may help and happy to photograph anything else you need

Hope you get sorted
Andy
Andy Chaffey

To load a photo on this board it must be less than 1 mb in size. You can shrink photos wiht all sorts of software, even Windows Live Photo Gallery. I use Irfanview which is a free photo editing programme.
Mike Howlett

You may have to shorten the track rod ends (the ball joint at the threaded end). Also if the inner tie rod bottoms out when being screwed into the ball joint you'll need to saw a bit off the end.

Daniel Stapleton


Hi gents, embarrassment I should have looked at
Peter May web sight. The top trunnion was 180
degrees out.well that's rectified now.
But the angle of steering arm is at an odd angle now . Regards Pete
P C Knightley

Hi Pete
found this using google images it may help
Cheers
Rod

R W Bowers

This thread was discussed between 05/04/2013 and 08/04/2013

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