PART 3: FRONT SUSPENSION OVERHAUL

Work begins on our 1967 two-door Morris Minor 1000 saloon as we strip down the front suspension to replace some missing components and upgrade a few others.

Last issue we asked Morris Minor expert Russ Smith to cast his eyes over our new purchase, helping us to compile a list of jobs to be done. He picked up a number of small items that we can choose whether or not to fix, but also a couple of more serious things that definitely need our attention.

The most important of these was that the front suspension was missing its bump stops. This should be an MoT fail, but only if the tester knows what should be there – it is far easier to spot something that is present and defective than it is to know when something is missing entirely. Not that our Minor had been put through a ministry test since 2017, because when that one expired it was declared as MoT exempt.

I shall be booking a test before putting the Minor into regular use, but it makes sense to sort out any known faults beforehand, otherwise you are really wasting everybody’s time. And for me this means starting with those bump stops. That in itself would have been a simple task, but these things have a way of snowballing. In this case, Russ had also pointed out that the torsion bar lever on the driver’s side was missing its adjuster plate where it attaches to the crossmember. This plate also adds strength to the mounting point, so its fitment is not optional.

The good news is that this adjuster plate only costs a pound or two to buy, but the bad news is that you have to dismantle the suspension on that side to fit it. On a Minor this is not a terribly difficult task, (although of course any job gets difficult when you are trying to dismantle parts that have not been touched for many years,) you just need to separate the two halves of the front wishbone, support the rear half, remove this from the bottom trunnion and then lower it down to take the tension off the spring. Sounds simple if you say it quickly enough, but since we could see that some of the suspension bushes looked past their sell-by date, it made sense to replace these at the same time. That in turn meant I had to dismantle the suspension on both sides. I then opted to fit improved polyurethane bushes all round. As Russ said, the rubber bushes were pretty rubbish in 1967, and they are generally even worse today.

2Also, when you have a wheel off, take the opportunity to examine it carefully on both sides looking for any damage, but also for the date mark – the Minor was wearing quality and virtually unworn Bridgestone rubber all round. At the time Simon was delighted, but now he suspects they may have been made in 2011.

1A little tip that is well worth heeding – when you need to take the wheel off a new purchase for some servicing in the garage, always try the wheelbrace and jack that are in the boot. That way you’ll know if they will be of any use if you should ever be stranded by the roadside with a puncture. As it turned out, the wheelbrace in the Minor had barely enough leverage to shift the wheel nuts.

4 Cleaning off the accumulated grease and muck with degreaser and plenty of rags showed that the trackrod end boot looks to be fine.

3 The steering joints were utterly caked in grease and muck – it is nice that somebody has been enthusiastic with the grease gun, but there is no way you can use the nipples in this condition without risking the introduction of some grit in with the fresh grease. The mess also makes it impossible to properly assess the condition of any rubber boots.

5 There was not such good news elsewhere as the bush on the top trunnion looks to be time- expired. The cracks in the collar that you can see are not necessarily the problem, though they do suggest it has been in there a while. The bigger issue is that the pin does not sit centrally, meaning that the bush inside the trunnion is seriously worn.

6 Before cracking on with dismantling though, we wanted to fit the bump stops whose absence had started us on this line of work. On the offside there was only one hole visible for mounting the upper bump stop and we couldn’t see where the other hole had been plated over, which made positioning it something of a gamble.

8Our inner wing was missing this protrusion. However, we positioned the bump stop using the one remaining bolt hole, then jacked up the wheel to see what our options were for the second hole. (It is surprising how much the kingpin moves in an arc, so you want to get it as close to its upper travel limit as you can.)

7So we paid a visit to a Minor-owning couple we knew in town and asked if we could have a look in their wheelarch. From that we could see that while the rear mounting bolt goes through the inner wing and into the engine bay, there should be a lip that protrudes slightly into the wheelarch and the second bolts mounts to this.

10 The lower (rebound) stop was also missing, but there was no problem with seeing where this needed to go – there should be a rubber pad bonded to the top of this angled bracket bolted to the inner wing at the bottom of the slot through which the damper arm (which doubles up as the top suspension arm) protrudes.

9From this we figured there was just enough room to drill up from below, entering the engine bay behind this reinforcing flitch panel. It was awkward but not impossible to get the bolt in and stop it from turning while the nut was being tightened up, but at least it is not something we will have to do too often.

11 Rather than trying to bond new rubber onto the old and rusty bracket, complete new replacements are only £5.95, so we got two of those. With the suspension raised so that the damper arm was lifted out of the way, fitting them was simple, although they were a very tight fit over the flange in the inner wing slot.

12 On the nearside, the top bump stop mounting hole had been plated over from underneath, but we could see its location when viewed from above in the engine bay. It was a bit of a squeeze behind the wiper motor, but we were able to get a small cordless drill in there and drill down through the plate.

14 It was now time to start on the suspension proper. Never having done this job before, we were following the workshop manual. As we shall see next issue, this did lead us astray at one point, but not disastrously. We started on the offside by jacking up the rear wishbone to take the spring tension and removing the wishbone tie bar.

13 Curiously, the plating on this side had extended this section of the inner wing correctly, giving extra width to the flange in this area so that the front bolt (the one on the left in this shot) could be secured entirely in the wheelarch without extending into the engine bay. The other bolt should really be changed for a shorter one.

17 With the fork removed along with an additional bolt that tied the front and rear wishbone arms together, we could undo the nuts securing each end of the front wishbone arm to the fulcrum pins – one through the eye bolt at the inboard end and the other through the lower trunnion – and remove the front wishbone arm.

19 First though, we had to return to the outer end of the wishbone arm and undo the nut securing it to the rearward facing end of the trunnion pin. We could then knock the pin forwards and out of the trunnion, before lowering the jack from under the wishbone until the spring was no longer under tension.

18We could now see just how badly worn the bush was in the eyebolt, which secures the inner ends of the lower wishbone arms to the chassis rail. Clearly the front suspension would have needed dismantling on both sides, whether or not the torsion bar adjuster plate had been left off.

15 The wishbone fork to which the tie bar connects is one of four points at which the two wishbone halves are joined together, so it has to be removed. Unfortunately the nut securing it was buried deep in the rear wishbone, and there was not enough space to get our chunky 3/8W socket onto it.

16 Fortunately a slimmer 11/16AF six point socket was a snug fit with a tap or two from a copper hammer, and that did the trick. We shall replace the nuts anyway – they are a special design with a round section that holds the hex head away from the arm itself and makes it easier to access.

20 The manual says to undo the nuts and bolts holding the torsion bar lever to the crossmember and slide the lever forwards off the splines on the torsion bar. Ha! There was no way this lever was moving, and there was not enough room to fit the adjuster plate between it and the crossmember.

21 Because we were going to be removing the wishbone arm and the adjusting lever so we could clean and grease the torsion bar splines for later adjustments, we had to mark their relative positions. We didn’t want to scribe the metal and introduce a potential weak point, so measured the height of the arm’s outer bolt hole from the ground to act as a help when reassembling.

23Unsure exactly how to slide the wishbone arm along the torsion bar splines, we called Russ. He advised knocking the wishbone arm back on the splines with a copper hammer. This did the trick, disengaging the wishbone arm from the pivot spigot secured to the fulcrum pin so that we were then able to manoeuvre the torsion bar off the car and away.

22The manual also says to ‘ Pulloffthe forwardsplinedendofthetorsion barfromthesplinesinthewishbonearm andlowerthewishbonetotheground.’ Obviously that didn’t want to slide anywhere either. Note the pen marks here for position – we weren’t expecting them to survive the cleaning, which was why we also took the measurements in step 20.

24This is the spigot pivot, a thick metal cup that is secured to the rear of the pin that passes through what remains of the bush in the eye bolt. Where the splines on the wishbone finish, there is then a recess that sits over this cup and secures the front of the torsion bar/wishbone arm assembly to the car’s chassis rail. Notice how off- centre the pin is in the eye bolt because of the worn bush.

27And there it was, in good shape apart from the ovality of the eye. We should note here that one of the biggest problems was finding the right sockets, spanners, nuts and bolts because the Minor uses a weird mix of Whitworth, BSF and UNF fixings, and not all are as original. The moral is to go slowly, and test thoroughly before applying pressure.

26We had thought that the eye bolt would be a nightmare to move, expecting it to be rusted into the chassis rail. However, after undoing its securing nut and putting the trolley jack handle into the eye to act as a lever, it turned easily enough and could be gently knocked out from behind.

25You can see where the collapsed bush has allowed metal-to-metal contact between the pin and the eye bolt, damaging both. We opted to replace the eye bolt too as they are only £13.57 each. It is secured with a large nut on the inside face of the chassis rail, having passed right through this member.