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MG MG Y Type - Wheel Chamber

Dear all
In doing a chassis-up restoration of my YT, I encountered a "funny" problem. The the left hand side front wheel leans in by about 3/4" (19mm) - whilst the right hand side wheel stands perfectly vertical. I suppose this is called the chamber. One can tell how bad this is, by comparing the wheel with the angular square right next to it.
The chassis is straight and so are all front suspension parts. The whole suspension is overhauled with all swivel-link bushes and the fulcrum distance tubes new and reamed. What can be the reason for this wrong alignment and how can I fix it? I am bit lost, since I cannot find any means to correct the misalignment...
Cheers, Anton

Anton Piller

Anton: what an interesting problem! The Y-type/TD suspension should increase negative camber as deflection from the neutral position increases, but not by this much! I noticed two things from your photograph:

a) I see that your car's front suspension has been fitted with a YB-style anti-roll bar. This was not standard on YAs and YTs. I wonder if there are any other modifications to the mountings or geometry which could affect the camber (you don't need the "h") of the wheel? YBs have a chassis modification which effectively lowers the inner suspension pivot.

b) The wear pattern on the tyre shows wear on the inner edge of the tread area. This could be from the excess camber - if so the problem has been there for some time - or it could be from excessive tracking error (the degree to which the front wheels run parallel to each other - on the Y chassis there should be very slight toe-in, and it looks like you have had quite a lot of toe-out). Is the wear pattern the same on the other front wheel?

I'd suggest a very careful remeasurement of the suspension geometry, in particular the pivot points top and bottom, and check that both front springs are compressing to the same length under normal load. You may find some clues there.... good luck!

Tim

Tim Griggs

Tim
Thank you for your expert advise. I must admit that I bought the car some thirty years ago - and it was in terrible state. So much so, that it was always put aside to make room for other restoration jobs, like two MG TDs, an Austin Princess, a Triumph Royal, a MK2 Saloon and a Stag, an Austin Maestro and many Rover SD1s. For a time, I even owned and worked on two YTs in parallel - one for each of my children.
What made me especially proud was the mentioning of my name on page 6 of David Lawrence's Let there be Ys, as on of the "real enthusiast"...

a) Yes you are right, I am in the process of fitting a YB anti-roll bar to the YT. However, the front fixing holes have not been drilled to the chassis front-side member yet and so this could not affect the chamber. Other than this the chassis (No. 4220) is unspoiled and original. I even had it tested at my panel beating shop. Question: what do you mean with (you don't need the "h") of the wheel?

b) the wear pattern on the l/h front wheel is not relevant, since I own two sets of wheels. Long ago, I had the best four rims "straightened", overhauled and painted. So this might very well be a wheel of a different car. The wear pattern on there/h side indeed different. It looks like an old spare wheel with lots of thread left.

New front coil springs have been fitted, wich I had bought from either NTG or from the Octagon Car Club many years ago.

P.S.: The last sentence of your chapter a) makes me curious - what kind of modifications where applied to the YB? Could it be, that by using the best parts of my spares-stock, I unknowably used a YB-part? Apparently the dampers of the YT and the YB where of slightly different size....
Anton Piller

Gidday Anton, I have seen this on quite a few cars out here in Australia that have seen a lot of miles on rough roads. I believe the only cause of this is a bent front crossmember or badly worn lower inner bushes.

When the crossmember bends it usually results in both front wheels showing extra "camber" (not chamber as Tim pointed out), so if only one wheel is affected you will have to do some comparisons to identify your problem.

You need to remove the suspension from both sides and compare the lengths of the bottom and top links. You are looking for a shorter than standard top link (shock arm can be bent), and longer than standard bottom link (A arms from another model MG).

If you put a straight edge across the shock mounting platforms, you should see if the crossmember is bent.

Can you measure the distance the offset is at the top of the tyre - we can calculate what camber you have then (in degrees)- need the offset & height from the ground.

Keep in mind if you fit radial tyres, this camber will be ok, but if you intend to fit cross ply tyres you will need to fix this.

Let us know what you discover.

Cheers

Tony
The Classic Workshop
A L SLATTERY

Hello Tony

Thank you too, for your advise. The crossmember should be straight and unbent, since the chassis was checked by a professional workshop and the inner bushes, the steel distance tubes, the precision washers and bolts are new.

By the way, it was not Tim, but myself who started to use the wrong spelling of the camber - thank you for pointing this out.

As mentioned, the offset reads 19mm and the hight of the tire is 665mm. Even though, I am going to probably use radial tires, I want to get this setup right - not least because it looks terrible...

Regarding your suggestion to check the top and bottom links and the A-arm: this is something I will definitely do, since I suspect that maybe some TD stuff might have been used - since I used the optically best spares I had.

However, all the stripping and checking of the front suspension will have to wait for some time, since at present, I play with the woodwork of the doors. This being a major operation due to the fact that, in order for the wood to fit into existing door skins, the woodwork has to be designed collapsable. And because my garage is too narrow to fully open even one of the doors in order to be able to take it off or refit it, I have to do this outside the garage, during the European Summer month of July to September. Since I want the doors to fit perfect and since I am not a carpenter, this is one hell of a challenge with many more hours of blood sweat and tears ahead of me.

So, please be patient about me stripping and checking the front suspension. When starting this thread, I was not aware how elaborate this whole thing would become :o)

Cheers
Anton

Anton Piller

Anton, I had a similar problem when assembling my car and discovered that the cause, as silly as it seems, was that one of the springs wasn't properly seated!

From memory, I took the weight off the wheel,levered the spring back to where it should have been, there was a bit of a bang and all was well. There's probably only a very slim chance that this is your problem but it's worth checking! Neil

N Wakeman

Anton: I'm sure you'll deal with the problem in due course! Certainly the wood frame for the door looks very good.

By the way, you mention using radial tyres on your car when it's finished. There has been a lot of discussion here over the years about the merits and otherwise of using radial tyres - my own preference is to stick with the cross-ply tyres for which the car was designed. My first reason is that modern radials simply look wrong on what is really a pre-war car, and secondly the suspension and chassis were not designed for the behaviour of radials and their very different characteristics. I know that radials have many supporters, so this is just my personal view, but it's something to think about once your camber settings are correct!
Tim Griggs

Dear Neil & Tim

Neil: I am suspecting the coil springs as being the culprits as well. As Tim mentioned in his initial mail, I'll have to check the compressed lengths.

Tim: Thank you for the compliments, regarding the wood work. I am quite proud about it, especially since the door skins are from a different car and thus probably a bit different to the original ones that where beyond repair and i was lucky enough to find two doors in a better stage.
Regarding the tire question, I followed the occasional thread about this topic. I agree that radials don't look perfect, but I used them on my TDs and was very happy about them. I am very much into originality except for fitting a Shorrock blower and maybe "modern" tyres. But as you mentioned - I still have a lot of time to make up my mind.

Check below, how far the car has come....
Anton

Anton Piller

This thread was discussed between 21/07/2014 and 30/07/2014

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